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The Passing Show of Capitalism 



By 
Charles Edward Russell 



THE APPEAL TO REASON 

GIRARD, KANSAS 






Copyright 1912 

APPEAL TO REASON 

GIRARD. KANSAS 



fcCU309793 



THE ONLY THING WORTH WHILE. 1 

THE ONLY THING WORTH WHILE. 

The only thing in the world that is 
worth bothering about is the advance- 
ment of the Socialist movement. It in- 
cludes everything else that. can be named 
or imagined as a worthy object of life. 

Do you believe in philanthropy? This 
is the greatest philanthropic movement 
of all the ages. 

Do you believe in education ? This 
alone proposes to give to all the peoples 
of the earth a chance to be educated. 

Do you believe in art? This move- 
ment means the first free field and op- 
portunity for art. 

Do you believe in liberty? It is here. 
Or honesty? This means the first chance 
for men to be honest. Do you believe in 
equality for men and women ? That, 
too, is here. Do you believe in democ- 
racy, justice, kindness, decency, peace? 
All these things are embraced in the So- 
cialist movement and have their only 
hope in its success. 

I know some men and women that are 
giving up their lives to the preaching of 
peace, that there may be no more wars 
upon earth. Worthy object, no doubt, 
but here is the thing that will abolish 



2 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

wars. Other good people are interested 
in trying to rescue the Magdalenes. 
Worthy object, but here is the thing that 
will abolish prostitution. Other good 
people give money to schools and found 
colleges. Worthy object, but what is the 
use of these infinitesimal benefactions 
to the fortunate so long as the over- 
whelming majority of mankind must 
dwell in darkness, ignorance and 
drudgery? Here is the thing that will 
set them free. 

I see most excellent persons, moved by 
the increasing menace of the slums, de- 
voting their lives to the support of "set- 
tlements." But what is the use of a "set- 
tlement" at one end of the slum so long 
as we manufacture wholesale poverty at 
the other? 

I know many most admirable women 
and some men that are devoting their 
lives to the cause of woman suffrage, 
knowing how much of sanity, decency 
and progress it embraces. But this 
movement means not only the ballot for 
woman; it means complete political 
equality and it means also that economic 
independence and justice without which 
the ballot will be a comparatively small 
advantage. 



THE ONLY THING WORTH WHILE. 3 

Young men setting out for a career in 
life used to think, and be encouraged to 
think, only of their own little personal 
advantage. What line of endeavor would 
bring them the most money, nothing 
else. I think it is a most encouraging 
fact that in these days something else is 
urged upon them. Service is something 
now; the bank account is not every- 
thing. 

Men have discovered or are discover- 
ing that, after all, aggrandizement is an 
awfully poor object upon which to waste 
this life divine. Young men in these 
times sometimes want to be doctors be- 
cause a doctor has an almost unequaled 
opportunity to be of use to his kind. 
Young men in the law schools get some 
agreeable lecturing about the opportun- 
ity of the legal profession to secure jus- 
tice between man and man. The serv- 
ice side of many occupations is begin- 
ning to have attention and praise. Let 
us give thanks. 

You can see the same tendencies at 
work in literature and art; slowly, I 
know it, slowly; but still they are at 
work. The stodgy universities and 
white rabbit professors still teach their 
pupils that the gauge of good literature 



4 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

is the approval of the elect, but the pu- 
pils do not seem to relish that kind of 
senile flub-dub as much as they used to. 
They are beginning to perceive that the 
measure of good literature is the meas- 
ure of its contribution to the human 
cause and that it is better to write one 
good protest than a thousand essays in 
the manner of Walter Pater. 

Aspiring youth in the twentieth cen- 
tury is not content to do what somebody 
else has done and to rumble on forever 
in the beaten tracks approved by the fac- 
ulty and other dull persons. They are 
beginning to get ahead of that doctrine 
of stupidity. 

The other day I was introduced to a 
young man that wanted to be an artist. 

"What for?" says I. 

"Well, don't you think that to increase 
the world's store of beauty is a worthy 
object for a life?" says he. 

I suppose that a few years ago the idea 
would have been received with a hoot. 
It is not too warmly welcomed now, but 
the fact that you hear it at all is the 
grand thing. In my time young men 
were wont to consider the artistic in- 
spiration as a means of expressing their 
poor little selves, as if they were of im- 



THE ONLY THING WORTH WHILE. 5 

portance to the world. Now they are 
beginning to think that art has some 
duties and relations to the life of man 
in the mass. I guess that is better. 

This young man was somewhat 
startled when the view was suggested 
that at present all the persons that can 
be benefited by the world's store of 
beauty are inconsiderable when com- 
pared with those that cannot. He nad 
gotten hold of no more than the first 
suggestion of the truth. It had never 
occurred to him that at present the work 
of all the artists together, even the 
greatest and most prodigal of their gifts, 
is expended for the benefit of only a 
minute fraction of the race. Only an 
inconsiderable handful at present can 
enjoy the paintings and statues or read 
the literature or hear the music ; and the 
labors of all the artists are, therefore, 
practically in vain. They work for the 
benefit of a handful and those in the 
least need of their labors. 

Until this condition is set straight I 
don't see wherein art is much of an ob- 
ject to expend a life upon. 

Art nor anything else, except protest. 
I should think that at the present time 
one protest was worth about one million 



6 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

times as much as any creation of art 
"for art's sake." 

Let's have something done for man's 
sake. 

That is where the Socialist movement 
comes in. It is the only thing in the 
world that proposes to abolish the con- 
dition under which the majority of man- 
kind must live without light or joy and 
under which the real blessings of life 
are the exclusive possession of a minor- 
ity. 

Every action, every word, every at- 
tention, every sacrifice given to such a 
cause is worth while, and every service 
in its behalf is profitable to the doer be- 
cause it enables him to feel that he has 
contributed something to the day of jus- 
tice and emancipation, he has made some 
use of this life that has been conferred 
upon him. If he has suggested Social- 
ism to but one person I should think that 
was a far nobler achievement than to 
burden the earth with any more "good 
literature." If he has distributed pamph- 
lets at a Socialist meeting that seems to 
me a higher achievement than to paint 
a picture or win a law case. 

Until the race is free nothing else is 
worth thinking about. 



THE ONLY THING WORTH WHILE. 7 

And it need not really make any dif- 
ference to the man that gives his service 
whether in his time he shall see anything 
done. Nevertheless he is contributing 
his share, he is doing his part, he is right 
with his conscience, he is making his 
protest. Either in this generation or 
some other the race will wake up and 
fling off its shackles. Well, the impor- 
tant thing for a man's conscience is that 
he should not condone the servitude, but 
should at every opportunity protest 
against it. 

Then he has no culpability for it. 

But if he acquiesces in it by keeping 
silent I don't see why he is not as bad as 
those that fatten drectly on other men's 
toil, sweat and blood. 

A movement that is worth a man's 
best effort and the devotion of his life 
is worth keeping pure and clear. I don't 
believe we know here in America how 
much of an inspiration we can give to 
the movement in some other places if we 
keep clear of the political ambitions and 
compromises that have wrecked so many 
proletarian movements. 

I do not know any reason why the 
movement in America should not stead- 
fastly pursue and achieve very different' 



8 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

aims. I can think of no good reason 
why it should ever bother with "re- 
forms" or seek mere political success or 
attempt merely to put somebody into 
office. And so long as it keeps clear of 
these pitfalls I should think it would 
offer to every young man the noblest of 
careers and to the world an illustration 
of a proletarian movement that was a 
success. 

Compromise is normal, easy and ad- 
visable if all you desire is success at the 
polls. But how can you compromise 
about a fundamental moral faith? The 
two things do not go together, you might 
as well talk about white blackness or hot 
snow. Socialism is either right or it is 
wrong. If it is right, then it is a thing 
far too noble and fine and far too impor- 
tant to mankind to be mixed up with 
sordid motives and ideals of parliamen- 
tary success, and if it be wrong the men 
in it had better drop it. 

One thing or the other. 

It is not of the least importance that 
John Smith should gratify his ambition 
and become Premier of England, it is of 
the greatest importance that wage slav- 
ery should cease. 



ON WITH THE MAN HUNT. 9- 

ON WITH THE MAN HUNT. 

It seems that we in this country have 
no monopoly of government chumpiness. 
We may sometimes think we have, but 
we haven't. Other nations share the 
precious possession with us and there is 
enough in the office of the Home Secre- 
tary of Great Britain, I should judge, to 
supply the whole world. At least a re- 
port recently issued from that quarter 
makes some of our performances look 
almost intelligent. 

In spite of the ever busy hangman and 
the policeman on every corner, crime in- 
creases at an appalling rate in Great 
Britain and some solemn ass in the 
Home Secretary's office has been study- 
ing the problem to find out why. He 
now announces to an uninformed race 
the reason. It is because there is not 
sufficient severity in dealing with crimi- 
nals, because the sentences are too light, 
because prison discipline has been re- 
laxed and because the public shows a 
sentimental sympathy for law-breakers. 

In a country where a man is arrested 
on Monday, convicted Tuesday and 
slammed into prison Wednesday there 
does not seem to be any official lenity 



10 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

toward law-breakers ; at least not so that 
you could notice it. The British idea is 
that for every crime committed some- 
body must be punished good and hard. 
Whether it is the right person seems 
from the records to be a minor consider- 
ation; also, to judge from recent illus- 
trations, whether the crime has been es- 
tablished. Just punish somebody; that 
is the idea, and punish him to the limit. 

There is no other country in the world 
in which the administration of criminal 
justice is so swift and inexorable. There 
are few countries where the whole legal 
machinery is so powerfully organized 
against the accused. In the Crippen 
case the trial judge, after pronouncing 
sentence, told the accused that the Court 
of Appeals would sustain his conviction. 
No protest was made in England against 
this extraordinary misuse of judicial 
functions. It was regarded as all right 
and a good thing. The man was a pris- 
oner; hand it to him. 

That is the idea from one end of the 
machine to the other. Hand it to him. 

Now it appears that in spite of this 
savage severity crime steadily increases, 
and the solemn asses in the Home office 
blame the increase to lenity. 



ON WITH THE MAN HUNT. 11 

How would it do for these dull observ- 
ers to take a trip through Stepney and 
Whitechapel before they come to any 
conclusions on a subject so momentous? 
I think they would see some things there 
that would instruct them. From that 
huge mass of ill-housed, ill-fed, hopeless 
and poisoned humanity what would they 
naturally expect to issue but crime? For 
years the alienists have been calling at- 
tention (usually in vain) to the rapid 
increase of insanity and degeneracy 
among these unfortunate millions. If 
there is anybody in the Home office with 
so much as a spoonful of brains he must 
know what this means in its relation to 
crime statistics. 

Of course crime increases. It in- 
creases not alone in London, but in 
every other city where the slum cloud 
broods and darkens. It is part of the 
inevitable penalty for maintaining 
slums; just as tuberculosis, and the bu- 
bonic plague and cholera and typhoid 
and rickets and racial decay are other 
parts of the same penalty. 

If you don't like the result you ought 
not to like the cause. 

Punishment never discouraged crime 
nor prevented it. If there is any lesson 



12 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

in history that is indubitable it is that 
crime has been the product of social con- 
ditions and has diminished as social con- 
ditions are improved. Punishment is all 
a blunder. It never did any good and 
always worked infinite ill. When they 
used to hang pirates and highwaymen 
every day piracy and highway robbery 
were common pursuits. I thought every- 
body knew this, but it appears that the 
Home Secretary's office of Great Britain 
is still unenlightened. It still believes 
in the gallows and plenty of it. I sup- 
pose that in view of these philosophers 
the thumb-screw was a means of grace 
and the rack an implement of civiliza- 
tion. 

The punishment maniacs, such as 
these persons at the Home Office, are a 
queer lot. First, they say that punish- 
ment is necessary in order that other 
criminals may be frightened and de- 
terred. If that is so, then the more ter- 
rible we can make the punishments the 
more effective they will be in frighten- 
ing and deterring. Therefore, we should 
revert at once to the methods of our 
wise, humane and highly civilized an- 
cestors. Certainly we have nothing now 
in the way of punishment so terrible as 



ON WITH THE MAN HUNT. 13 

the Iron Maiden, or breaking on the 
wheel, or the boots. Let us re-establish 
these splendid inventions. And since 
punishment is so salutary let us admin- 
ister it in public. I marvel that the 
Home Secretary has left out this point. 
Surely it must be a great error to have 
hangings in secret. Let their beneficent 
influence be widespread; let all the 
world see them, that the wicked may be 
terrified and the virtuous be uplifted. 

No more lenity. Let us put everybody 
into jail except those that we hang, elec- 
trocute or guillotine. That is the correct 
dope and the sure cure for the world's 
troubles. There are only five or six men 
in the world, anyway, whose perfect in- 
nocence entitles them to live, and one of 
them is in the office of the Home Secre- 
tary of Great Britain where he dwells in 
a cave and cracks bones with his teeth. 

While I am on this subject of the ad- 
ministration of the criminal law in En- 
gland (so much admired of our own 
Cave Dwellers) I am reminded of a lit- 
tle incident that once fell under my own 
observation. 

It was sixteen years ago. A young 
woman that lived in the Spitalfields 
slums married against her parents' cun- 



14 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

sent. The young man she married was 
worthless; most young men reared in 
such conditions are worthless. When 
her baby was born he deserted her. 

She came back to the wretched hovel 
where her parents lived. Her father re- 
fused to see her. Her mother turned 
her adrift with a sixpence. 

She spent the sixpence for a small 
bottle of milk and a paper of crackers* 
Carrying these and her baby she wan- 
dered through the streets, forever sit- 
ting down to rest and forever being 
moved on by policemen. 

So long as the milk lasted she fed it to 
the baby, moistening the crackers in it 
and holding them to the baby's lips* 
When the milk was all gone she moist- 
ened crackers in her own mouth and fed 
them to the baby. She ate nothing her- 
self. 

About the third day, it must have 
been, after her mother had turned her 
adrift, she wandered into a square, well 
toward the West End. She remembered 
the square, and remembered sitting 
down upon a bench with the baby still 
in her arms. The next thing she knew 
she was in a police station. She had 
been found lying on the bench with the 



ON WITH THE MAN HUNT. 15 

baby under her. The baby was dead. 

She was charged with murder, and ar- 
raigned. When she came into the court 
for trial it was evident that her feeble 
mind understood next to nothing of what 
was going on. To the questions that 
were asked her she gave scarcely intel- 
ligible answers. She was of the third 
generation of slum dwellers; mind was 
almost extinct within her, crushed out 
by the dreariness of slums and three 
generations of starvation. 

She had been arrested on a Friday, 
she was tried on the following Wednes- 
day and sentenced to be hanged two 
weeks from that day. She had been 
found guilty of murdering her baby. 

In extenuation, I must observe that 
child murder by East End women is ex- 
tremely common and the courts were 
determined to put an end to it. Also to 
the court the case seemed clear enough. 
The baby was found dead under its 
mother. Well, of course, the mother had 
smothered it. That was the usual way. 
Besides she was of the class that de- 
served no consideration anyway. To 
the gallows with her. 

So they sentenced that wretched, tal- 
low-faced, chalk-boned thing to be 



16 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM. 

hanged by the neck until dead that jus- 
tice might be vindicated and law-break- 
ers appalled. And they gave her two 
weeks to prepare for this invaluable and 
necessary service to society. 

But about that time a newspaper re- 
porter came into the story. Something 
about it attracted his attention. He 
looked into the case and was convinced 
that the woman had been railroaded. 
There was not a scrap of evidence that 
she had dreamed of killing the child. 
On the contrary, there was every evi- 
dence that she had struggled hard to 
keep the baby alive. He went to Spital- 
fields and verified her story. He found 
the mother and the grocer that had sold 
her the milk and crackers, and even 
turned up somebody that had noticed 
her wandering up and down feeding the 
child, and he pointed out that the empty 
milk bottle and the sack that had con- 
tained the crackers had been found 
clutched in her hand as she slept. 

With these facts he began to protest 
in his newspaper. He aroused at laSt 
the co-operation of his editor. By dint 
of continual protest they began to stir 
public opinion and at last they sue- 



ON WITH THE MAN HUNT. ^ 17 

ceeded, just in time, in preventing the 
woman's legal murder. 

The Home Secretary commuted her 
sentence to imprisonment for life. 

It is, therefore, difficult to see exactly 
wherein the English system of justice 
errs on the side of lenity. I don't see 
how it could be more severe unless it 
chopped off the head of every offender 
as soon as he was arrested. If crime in- 
creases in a country that has the sever- 
est criminal code on earth there must be 
some other cause than lack of severity. 

I suppose this fact would be quite ap- 
parent to anybody except a Home Secre- 
tary. 

Still, I don't know that he is essen- 
tially duller than our own charitable 
rich that give money to the warfare 
upon tuberculosis and ardently support 
the system that produces tuberculosis, 
or duller than the men that denounce 
war and create it. The devil is always 
represented as a thin gentleman. If he 
observes attentively the spectacle pre- 
sented by our slum settlements and tu- 
berculosis campaigns he cannot possibly 
be thin. That is, supposing him to have 
any sense of humor. 

The world grows better in spite of 



18 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Home Secretaries, temporary relapses, 
troglodytes and Cave Dwellers. We are 
not so savage as our ancestors. Read 
the accounts of old prisons and old ex- 
ecutions and see if this is not so. At the 
beginning of the nineteenth century 
there were 137 capital offenses in En- 
gland, and the gallows was shown daily 
with its victims. Any man, innocent or 
guilty, that came within the peril of the 
law gave himself up for lost. None but 
Home Secretaries and Cave Dwellers la- 
ment the passing of such conditions. 
Steadily the world moves on. All of 
these prison reform movements and agi- 
tations prove the advance of the race to- 
ward the inevitable truth that punish- 
ment is always a blunder; that society 
has no right to punish those that go 
astray, but only to help and to restore 
them. 

I look for a day when there will be no 
more prisons. "Ever worse than use- 
less/' wrote Charles Dickens of the 
hangman. He might have said exactly 
the same thing of the jail. If we may 
not hang, may we imprison ? 

Every jail that I ever heard of was 
only an academy of crime. The more 
punishments the more crime. If this 



ON WITH THE MAN HUNT. 19 

divine temple of the soul is too sacred 
to be maimed and mangled on the rack 
it is too sacred to be hung up in the "bull 
ring" or tortured in the dark chamber. 

I have known criminals of every 
shade, kind and degree, and I have yet to 
find one in whom there was not plenty 
of good. The idea of the punishment- 
maniacs is to crush out that good, that 
society may be avenged upon the wrong- 
doers itself has created. A man must 
have a curious kind of mind that can de- 
fend such a doctrine. Let us have done 
with the whole dreadful business. We 
have murdered enough souls behind our 
prison walls and barred windows. This 
is a good time to protest against mur- 
dering any more. 

Cave Dwellers that believe there is 
any such thing as a criminal class and 
that God makes a criminal just as He 
makes a cow, must feel their theory get- 
ting a jolt when they come to consider 
the story of Australia. 

Australia was originally settled by 
criminals, and what would be called, I 
suppose, the very worst kind of crimi- 
nals. They were criminals that had 
been transported in abominable prison 
ships to the Australian convict camps. 



20 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

probably the most truly hellish places 
known upon this earth. Criminals of 
both sexes. 

This was only sixty or seventy years 
ago. Today descendants of these unfor- 
tunates are among the finest people in 
Australia. 

As soon as the criminal class got a 
chance in life it ceased to be criminal 
and became honest. 

Convicts were released sometimes 
upon the ticket-of -leave system and went 
out into the country and built homes. 
Then they reformed. 

Those that remained in the camps 
were treated with a cruelty as fiendish as 
any punishment-maniac could desire. 
These never reformed, but grew stead- 
ily worse until they had to be killed or 
transported to Norfolk Island, which 
was the same thing. 

Here was the test of the two systems 
and these were the results. 

Still, I suppose there is no test in the 
world that would convince a Cave 
Dweller. 

"Punish the guilty/' says he, and goes 
out to make another stone hatchet. 



CAPITAL DRIPPING WITH BLOOD. 21 

CAPITAL DRIPPING WITH BLOOD. 

The terrible factory fire in New York 
which cost the lives of a hundred and 
fifty workers, most of them young 
women, is one of those occurrences that 
rebuke comment. The mind recoils be- 
fore the dark tragedy and deep pathos 
of the disaster, finding texts and dis- 
courses merely futile and trivial in pres- 
ence of such a reality. 

The significance of the happening is 
clear to all. Insufficient protection for 
the workers inevitably brings about such 
a catastrophe at intervals. The relent- 
less system of capitalism exacts its toll 
from those that toil. In its customary 
operation it absorbs lives only by slow 
degrees, grinding the bodies and minds 
and souls of its victims into dollars by 
approved process. When a cog slips the 
rate of absorption is suddenly acceler- 
ated and so many toilers are extermi- 
nated outright. 

It is the familiar result. So long as 
we tolerate a civilization that places div- 
idends above men and women, so long 
as -we will endure working conditions 
based upon maximum profit instead of 
maximum safety and comfort, such 
wholesale murders must continue to ap- 



22 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

pal and to stun us. It is another of the 
old lessons that we have learned so 
often and that we must learn and learn 
again until the working class of the 
country wearies of it and gives the word 
to stop. 

If these poor girls have hastened by 
their deaths the day when their brothers 
and sisters awake to accomplish the 
emancipation of labor they have accom- 
plished more than most of the word 
mongers since the beginning of time. 

If their fate spurs labor on to stretch 
out mighty hands in its own defense 
they will have contributed more to the 
progress of the race than all the rest of 
us put together. 

One phase of the fire protection situ- 
ation in New York, completely over- 
looked in the empty investigation that 
followed the recent disaster, is of value 
to the thoughtful. It is part of the duty 
of certain firemen detailed by the de- 
partment to inspect safety apparatus 
and escape arrangements in buildings 
where numbers of persons work or 
gather. 

These inspectors are frequently in- 



CAPITAL DRIPPING WITH BLOOD. 23 

timidated into neglecting the service 
they are sent to perform. 

In this way : 

The fireman finds the owner of the 
building and demands to be taken over 
the premises that he may report whether 
or not the law has been complied with. 
The owner objects. He declares he has 
complied with the law. The fireman 
asks to be shown. Then the owner lets 
him understand that if he persists 
charges of attempted extortion will be 
made against him at Fire Headquarters. 

What is the fireman to do? Firemen 
in New York, as elsewhere, are faithful 
public servants, performing dangerous 
and difficult tasks with honesty and zeal 
for small pay. Most of them, no longer 
youths, must look to the department as 
their only sure source of livelihood. 
Meanwhile a fireman is only one mem- 
ber in a large force. Charges of at- 
tempted grafting preferred against him 
by a property owner will be considered 
and he will be in grave danger. Even 
if he clears them suspicion will cling to 
him so long as he remains. 

It is quite apparent what must hap- 
pen. Many inspectors refuse to take the 
risk and the property owner is not mo- 



^24 THE PAlSSING^SHOW OF : CAPITALISM. 

Jested. Cases of firemen that have lost 
their places through insisting upon per- 
forming their full duty are known to 
every man in the department. 

The features of the disaster that 
were brought out by the investigation 
presented nothing new nor surprising. 
There were the same indications of 
faulty fire escape construction, narrow 
stairs and doorways, rotten hose, stand- 
pipes without water, overcrowded 
rooms, precautions against theft of 
goods to hinder hasty exit. The sugges- 
tion of locked doors adds an element of 
unspeakable horror. However the trust 
may stand, they might as well have been 
locked, so difficult of access were they 
to the panic-stricken workers. 

The fire chief recalled that he had 
constantly predicted the tragedy and he 
took occasion to give warning that it 
might be repeated any day in any of 
hundreds of buildings in New York. He 
spoke of the difficulty of obtaining ade- 
quate legislation to cover safety devices 
and the energetic opposition of property 
owners and architects. 

Meanwhile the various authorities 
and officers concerned passed the re- 
sponsibility along, one to another, in the 



CAPITAL DRIPPING WITH BLOOD. 25 

usual way. Apparently no one was to 
blame. Usually no one is to blame. 

What's the use of safeguards ? Prop- 
erty can be insured against destruction 
by fire. Human lives are taken by an 
"act of God" — and there are always 
plenty more to be had. Labor is simply 
labor, you know, and costs nothing but 
the hire. 

Property is the sacred thing. The 
courts have decided that humanity does 
not weigh against it, that its right is 
not "derived from the dictates of nat- 
ural justice.' ' 



TAHITI NEEDS CIVILIZING. 

I suppose that all things considered 
the island of Tahiti affords the best ex- 
ample of physical happiness so far at- 
tained by man. The products of the soil 
are so varied that they supply all human 
wants and so overabundant that priva- 
tion is practically unknown. There are 
the ragged inequalities that are inevit- 
able under the present organization of 
society, but no one ever goes hungry. 

Until the white man came along with 
our superior brand of civilization, dis- 
ease and dishonesty were alike unknown. 
There were then about 200,000 people 
on Tahiti and the adjacent islands. Civ- 
ilization has reduced them to about 
9,000, which, of course, is another proof 
of our social superiority. 

About a century ago the peculiarly 
mild, happy and honest state of savage 
society on Tahiti was a favorite theme 
of some European philosophers, who 
pointed out that whenever man was as- 
sured of his daily bread and not obliged 
to scramble, fight, gouge, murder, lie, 
cheat and steal to get it, the fine part of 
his nature had a chance to develop and 
he lived without guile and without of- 



TAHITI NEEDS CIVILIZING. 27 

fense. The lesson, of course, was lost 
upon Europe, which except for a knot of 
Red Republicans in France, held the 
scrambling, gouging, murdering, cheat- 
ing, lying and stealing to be divinely or- 
dained and not to be disturbed upon 
earth. 

About 1869 France took possession of 
Tahiti and has managed it ever since in 
a way that fills Anglo-Saxon visitors 
with disgust. It has not exploited the 
natives nor taken away their lands nor 
interfered with them in any way. Every 
Tahitian is a citizen of the republic and 
not a mere "nigger" and he has all the 
rights of every white man. Incidentally 
the natives get the same wages as white 
men and cannot be worked longer hours. 
This, of course, is very bad, and shows a 
pitiable weakness on the part of the 
French government, it being well known 
that the function of "niggers" every- 
where is to labor for the white man and 
take what the white man is pleased to 
give him, including the lash and bullets. 

About nine in ten Englishmen and 
four in five Americans that visit Tahiti 
make an identical comment on these con- 
ditions : 

"If English or Americans were run- 



28 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

ning this island they would make some- 
thing out of it, but of course, what can 
you expect of the French ?" 

What would they make of it ? I asked 
one of these philosophers — having vis- 
ions of things I had witnessed in India 
and Ireland, also of certain records in 
the Philippines. 

"Why they would build mills and fac- 
tories and put all this native labor at 
work at reasonable prices. They would 
grow cotton and build cotton mills and 
make cotton cloth. They would grow 
sugar cane and build sugar refineries. 
They would bring in Chinese coolies and 
grow things and make business hum. 
There's millions to be made out of this 
island and the French are letting it go 
to waste." 

Sure thing. What Tahiti needs is 
some cotton mills, such as I have seen in 
South Carolina and Alabama, with 
gangs of little children working day and 
night in twelve-hour shifts for $1.80 a 
week. That's the idea. It wants a few 
sugar refineries like those in Brooklyn, 
where men can go crazy from the heat 
and the long hours and the hard work. 
It needs to be exploited in good shape 
and to the limit. 



TAHITI NEEDS CIVILIZING. 29 

It needs a few kind-hearted gentle- 
men that can own these mills and factor- 
ies and draw profits from them and give 
money to slum settlements or build li- 
braries or endow peace funds with a 
fraction of the wealth thus created. It 
needs a big working population under- 
fed and badly housed to fill the island 
with an anaemic and tubercular pro- 
geny. It needs crime, poverty, insanity 
and epidemics. That is what it needs 
and if a gang of our experts can be 
turned loose upon it for a little while 
that is what it will get. 

We are the boys for that. 

The inhabitants of Porto Rico are 
said to shed tears whenever they are re- 
minded of the good days when they were 
governed by Spain. In Hawaii we have 
about completed the extinction of the 
natives and have turned Honolulu into 
a bustling New England village, full of 
eager traders. In the Philippines the 
people think so much of our rule that 
the very first action of the national as- 
sembly was to pass unanimously a de- 
mand for independence. 

From all this it appears that when it 
comes to ruling "subject peoples" we 
are pretty hot stuff. We know how the 



30 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

thing is done and it is no wonder that 
we view with scorn the miserable fail- 
ure of the inferior French in Tahiti. 

The basis on which we work in these 
matters is that we know what is good 
for all these people. 

In this respect as in all other phases 
of our national policy we are merely 
parroting England. The English have 
always understood that God has en- 
dowed them with peculiar wisdom. For 
instance, they know exactly what is good 
for India. 

If the people of India don't happen 
to like it, why, fill them full of lead and 
go on. 

After one hundred and fifty years of 
English rule in India the people like 
"what is good for them" so little that 
nothing but the total lack of weapons 
keeps them from driving the English 
into the sea. That is the model that 
we have chosen for our very own. It is 
what greasy-souled hypocrites call "the 
white man's burden." 

The very summit of its glory may be 
thought to have been reached when aft- 
er annually pumping $100,000,000 out 
of India by the English method of ex- 



TAHITI NEEDS CIVILIZING. 31 

ploitation, 10,000,000 Indian people died 
in one year of starvation. 

They didn't know that starvation was 
good for them, but the English exploit- 
ers did. 



32 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

HURRY UP WITH A COAT OF ARMS. 

The grandest exponent of national 
thought now published in our broad, 
bright land is the Ladies Home Journal; 
a proposition I am prepared to defend 
against all comers. 

Recently somebody in much, and as 
you will readily see, natural perturba- 
tion of mind, wrote to the Journal ask- 
ing what was the proper thing in sta- 
tionery. 

Mr. Bok, the gifted editor of the 
Journal, was on the job in a minute. 
He replied that a perfect lady might 
have engraved upon her stationery 
either her monogram or her address, 
but the only correct stationery for a 
gentleman must bear his coat-of-arms. 

The whole country will breathe easier 
now that this vexed question is settled 
and settled right. Everyone can see 
that until we know what is the correct 
dope in stationery there can be no peace 
of mind, no national progress. 

You take an average American citi- 
zen whose father was a farm laborer, 
perhaps, or a carpenter, and until he 
knows what is good form in stationery 
he can't do a thing. I don't suppose he 



HURRY UP WITH A COAT O* ARMS. 33 

would know how to put one foot before 
the other. But now our pathway is per- 
fectly clear. What we want is coats-of- 
arms and we're going to have them. 

No free-born American citizen in en 
regie without one. 

Thank God that we have the Ladies 
Home Journal in our midst to tell us 
about these things! Without it some 
of us might have written on stationery 
without our coats-of-arms and then 
where should we be? 

Yes, let us give thanks for such a 
friend in time of need. The great para- 
mount issue in this country is not wheth- 
er the majority of us are to have work 
and enough to eat, but the correct thing 
in stationery; and at this imminent 
crisis in our nation's history there 
stands the faithful Mr. Bok pointing the 
way. Use coats-of-arms on your sta- 
tionery and all will be well. 

Some persons have argued that be- 
cause the Ladies Home Journal has an 
enormous circulation and is composed 
principally of vital information like this 
the fact argues some mental defect in 
the American public. Far be such a 
thought from us. There is much more 
in the Ladies Home Journal than in- 



34 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

formation about correct stationery. 
There is, for instance, a crushing and 
final argument against Woman's Suf- 
frage, for Mr. Bok has learned and 
printed the fact that the "real ladies" 
and society leaders of New York are 
all against votes for women, and of 
course that settles the matter. Also on 
the opposite page I come with joy upon 
this gem of thought: 

"Prune souffle makes a tasty dessert 
and nice for a change." 

Well, I should say so. And Mr. Bok 
ought to know. Prunes are his special- 
ty. But might I suggest that by some 
transposition this precious information 
has been made to appear upon the 
wrong page? Its natural place, being a 
mention of prunes, would be at the close 
of the argument against woman suf- 
frage. 



THE BRIGHT BUSINESS MAN. 

Here is an actual conversation just 
as it occurred with a San Francisco 
merchant : 

Merchant — Ah, yes, business is very 
bad in San Francisco at present. You 
see, the labor unions have ruined every- 
thing. 

Visitor— Have they injured your bus- 
iness? 

Merchant— I should say so. They 
have hurt me enormously. 

Visitor — How is that? 

Merchant — Why, you see, all my ex- 
penses are so much greater than they 
used to be. I must pay more for clerk 
hire, to begin with. 

Visitor — But your clerks do not be- 
long to any union. 

Merchant — I know that, but that is 
only one item of expense that has been 
increased. 

Visitor — What are the others? 

Merchant— -Rent, for one thing; that 
is considerably higher. Then all the 
freight rates have gone up about 20 per 
cent. That makes a great difference 
to me. Then money is tight ; I must pay 
a higher rate of interest for it. 



36 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Visitor — And you charge all that to 
the unions? 

Merchant — Well, of course not all of 
it, I suppose, but the unions have ruined 
everything. 

This was a "bright, keen-witted busi- 
ness man/' especially noted for his fore- 
sight. I give his remarks as typical of 
his class. In all sincerity he accepted 
the fantastic notion that because it was 
the fashion in his caste to denounce the 
labor unions therefore the unions 
caused drouths, increased railroad rates, 
increased interest charges, and caused 
spavin, ring-bone, rheumatism, lumbago 
and ingrowing toenails. 

Observe how much the boasted fore- 
sight of this class really amounts to, 
even in their own line of business. It 
is obvious that this man knew nothing 
about economics or contemporaneous 
events; let us see how much he knew 
about his own affairs. 

He was engaged in selling, at retail, 
several kinds of goods. Most of his cus- 
tomers were the wives of working men. 
Whenever working men had work and 
wages, and were in good physical con- 
dition, this man's business was good. 
When working men were out of work or 



THE BRIGHT BUSINESS MAN. 37 

suffered a reduction of pay, this man's 
business was bad. The more money the 
working class had to spend for comforts 
as well as for necessities, the better for 
the business of this man. But if the 
physical condition of the working class 
and their standard of living should de- 
cline this man's business would decline 
in the same ratio. 

But the object of the labor union was 
to maintain the standard of living of 
the working class and enable it to buy 
some comforts as well as necessities and 
to increase its physical welfare. 

What a nation of thoughtful people 
we are! How readily we perceive the 
causes of our troubles ! Another people 
might think that when railroad capitali- 
zation is increasing four times as fast 
as the total wealth of the country that 
fact might account for some part of our 
misfortunes. But we cannot be fooled 
in that way. We know that everything 
that goes wrong is due to the hellish 
machinations of the labor unions. 
Everything. If there is a dog goes mad 
in Philadelphia, it's the labor unions, 
and if there is a cyclone in Texas, why, 
the unions did it. All we need to be 
happy is to abolish the unions. 



38 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

This is one reason why any denuncia- 
tion of the unions meets with the warm 
approval of so many small business men. 
With their noses buried in their ledgers 
all they can see is that wagon drivers 
now get $50 a month and formerly got 
$46, and work now ten hours where 
they formerly worked fourteen. Differ- 
ence of $4 a week and four hours a day. 
Down with the unions. They can't see 
that the prosperity of business depends 
upon the prosperity of the working 
class, and that if we are to reduce the 
standard of living of that class we must 
suffer also a corresponding reduction 
in consumption, which means in busi- 
ness. 

The obsessed retail merchant cannot 
see this, but he is beginning to see the 
advance of the "chain" store across the 
country and the impossibility of com- 
peting with that kind of a store, and 
some of these days he will see the other 
fact just as clearly — let us hope. 

I suppose he might see some of it 
now if he were not so much taken up 
with the ideas of his class, and if it 
were not for the pressure of the banks 
upon him. Class tyranny is a great 
thing in America. Suppose a retail 



THE BRIGHT BUSINESS MAN. 39 

grocer were to stand out for something 
against the dominant prejudice of the 
rest of his caste — what do you think 
would happen to him? It is the same 
way about the unions. The revered lead- 
ers of the business world declare that 
the unions must be abolished and the 
small fry instantly stick up their heads 
and shout: 

"That's so! They are a menace to 
prosperity !" 

They don't know why, any more than 
the man in San Francisco. 



40 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 
THE GOOD OLD SHELL GAME. 

"It's the good old shell game. Everyv 
body wins. No deception, gents. Kind- 
ly note that I take a little pill, Dr. Sher- 
man's Celebrated Specific, and place it 
under this shell, the Trusts. Now, gents, 
where is the little pill? Make your bets. 
Are you all done? Ah, here it is, under 
this other shell, the Labor Unions. Sorry, 
gents, you're stung again." 

So it goes, that grand old game. And 
once more the come-on wonders how it 
happened. 

Kindly note, brethren, that at New 
Orleans a few days ago three union 
leaders, connected with the Dock and 
Cotton Council, were convicted in the 
United States Circuit Court of con- 
spiracy in restraint of trade. 

The Dock and Cotton Council is one 
of the strongest union organizations of 
the country, certainly the strongest in 
the South. It has a membership of 
more than 50,000, including every la- 
borer whose work contributes directly 
to the shipping of cotton. It has been a 
source of much concern to the employers 
and its union sentiment is deep and 
loyal. 



THE GOOD OLD SHELL GAME. 41 

There is corresponding rejoicing 
among the masters over what has just 
happened. 

Two years ago members of the Coal 
Wheelers' Union refused to coal a ves- 
sel that was being loaded by non-union 
longshoremen. Action was started soon 
afterward against the presidents of the 
Dock and Cotton Council, the Coal 
Wheelers' Union and the Longshore- 
men's Union for interfering with inter- 
state commerce. Today they stand con- 
victed. 

And how was this done ? It was done 
by invoking the Sherman Anti-Trust 
Law, under the provision of which the 
men were tried. 

The Sherman Anti-Trust Law was a 
product of the Harrison administration. 
Its single purpose was to curb the spread 
and power of predatory corporations. 
It was drawn and passed with that sole 
construction in view. It was hailed at 
the time as the final settlement of the 
trust question and the instrument that 
must inevitably restore the principle of 
competition as the basis of commercial 
activity. 

The Anti-Trust Law remained on the 
books through the rest of Harrison's 



42 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

administration, through Cleveland's 
and through part of McKinley's without 
so much as seeing the light of day. In 
the meantime trusts continued to extend 
and increase and rob and wax fat and 
insolent, according to their nature. At 
last Attorney General Knox dug among 
the dusty files for this ancient cure-all 
and ladled it out to Jim Hill's Northern 
Securities Company. The Supreme 
Court rendered a decision upholding its 
constitutionality. Of course, that 
worked no harm to Mr. Hill, for the 
Securities Company was only a financial 
device, but the decision established the 
act permanently. Whereupon it was al- 
lowed to go to sleep. 

It occurred one happy day to the 
nimble mind of some clever corporation 
lawyer, highly paid for perverting the 
law in the interests of his clients, that 
the Anti-Trust Law had never had 
proper attention. Restraint of trade, 
eh? Why was not a labor union a com- 
bination in restraint of trade? 

Brilliant discovery, and of inestimable 
value. Here, in the weapon manufac- 
tured for holding up the trusts, was a 
sandbag wherewith the trusts might 
attack labor, their natural enemy. The 



THE GOOD OLD SHELL GAME. 4S 

club was promptly used and brought 
about the Danbury Hatters' decision. 
Now it has been used again and we 
have the New Orleans conviction. 

And after twenty-one years of the 
Sherman Anti-Trust Law which was to 
put an end to thieving trusts this is the 
net result. 

The means deliberately chosen to end 
the evils of corporation growth are the 
very means by which the corporations 
fatten and bulwark themselves; the de- 
vice invented to check corporation dom-' 
ninance is the very device by which the 
corporations confirm and strengthen 
their hold upon the country. 

The old game. 

Of course these things are not calcu- 
lated to cheer our drooping spirits to 
any great extent. But we can get some 
kind of a twisted smile out of the posi- 
tion they put us in. 

Come-ons ! 



44 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 
ABOLISH THE SENATE. 

We have learned through long and 
bitter experience that the Senate of the 
United States is nothing more nor less 
than a set of henchmen maintained di- 
rectly by the special interests and legis- 
lating brazenly and openly for their 
employers. 

So much, I say, we have learned. It 
has taken us some time. We are by 
nature an immensely conservative na- 
■ tion as concerns our governmental fab- 
ric. We are by nature an immensely 
optimistic and unsuspicious nation as 
concerns the abuses in our governmental 
system. We put up with the Senate 
year by year until its members became 
plethoric with power and callous with 
arrogance and it seemed as if that band 
of highbinders was never to be dis- 
turbed in its insolent game. 

But we have seen a ray of light. One 
result has been the retirement from the 
upper branch of Congress of a number 
of gentlemen that no longer find the 
atmosphere there quite healthful. An- 
other has been a decided revival of the 
agitation for election of Senators by 
direct vote. 



ABOLISH THE SENATE. 45 

There seems to be little doubt that 
the people have determined to bring 
about this radical change in the original 
method of forming the upper house. 
The blessed Constitution has been 
waved in vain. The agents of reaction 
have retired to their last ditches of 
delay and procrastination. Everything 
points to an important readjustment. 

To this situation some curious reflec- 
tions pertain. 

A popularly elected Senate will exist 
on the same basis as the House of Rep- 
resentatives. But with striking inequal- 
ities as to the number of constituents 
represented by its various members. 

For instance, Rhode Island will have 
two Senators. Massachusetts will have 
two. But owing to the difference in 
population the vote of a citizen in 
Rhode Island will be worth as much in 
the councils of the nation, as the votes 
of six of his neighbors living just across 
the line in Massachusetts. 

Nevada will have two Senators. New 
York will have two. But the citizen of 
Nevada will have as much influence 
upon legislation at the Capitol as one 



46 THE PASSIM^ SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

hundred and ten citizens of New York ! 

I think this is worth attention. 

So long as Senatorial representation 
rested upon the ancient theory of State 
independence, it was at least consistent. 
Nevada being regarded as an entity it 
was entitled to the same number of Sen- 
ators as New York, another unit in the 
family of States. This was the view of 
the founders of the Republic and their 
deliberate intention. Whatever its 
weaknesses, it was logically developed 
and inequalities of population could not 
affect it. 

But now we propose to do away with 
the plan of indirect election of the Sen- 
ators and to make them directly answer- 
able to the people. The Senators are no 
longer to represent the States but the 
electorate. Immediately all excuse for 
vast discrepancies in the size of constit- 
uencies vanishes and we are left with a 
ludicrous preponderance of influence in 
favor of sparsely settled communities. 

Some persons suggest as a remedy 
that Senators be apportioned to the 
several States on the basis of popula- 
tion, each State to have at least one 
Senator. 



ABOLISH THE SENATE. 47 

I know a scheme worth about one 
million of that. 

Abolish the doddering old Senate. 
What good does it do? 



48 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM 

TRUSTIFIED ARCHITECTURE IN CALI- 
FORNIA. 

The city of Pasadena, California, is 
one of the grandest places on the conti- 
nent. 

Every American citizen should go to 
Pasadena and explore it under the di- 
rection of Mr. Ballard, the competent 
town guide. Pasadena is the home of 
more than two hundred millionaires. It 
is perfectly grand. 

As you go about admiring the houses 
of our princes of industry you should 
learn how each one made his money. 
That will fill you with ecstatic 
thoughts and give you additional pleas- 
ures as you stand in the street and rub- 
ber-neck over the hedge at the roses, 
fountains, geraniums and grottoes. 

Pasadena is strong on architecture. 
Mr. Ballard will truthfully inform you 
that no two of the happy homes of our 
millionaire nobility are alike. After a' 
time you are quite ready to admit this 
fact as you wend your way, wondering 
what kind of houses Bedlam would erect 
if it were turned loose upon the job. 

The object of the Pasadena million- 
aires has been to spend their money. 



TRUSTIFIED ARCHITECTURE. 49 

It is an object that has weighed griev- 
ously upon them and in some cases, I 
should say, has undermined their intel- 
lects. 

One gentleman has copied an Italian 
villa near Naples, reproducing the gar- 
den and all. Another has imitated a 
Greek temple. Another has been good 
enough to give us a replica of a Moham- 
medan mosque. Another has turned to 
Japan. Three have reproduced English 
country houses. Seventeen have favored 
us with imitations of the Italian renais- 
sance and six with imitations of French 
villas. One gentleman has striven con- 
scientiously to satisfy all tastes by be- 
ginning with German renaissance, put- 
ting in a dash of colonial and ending 
with Moorish. Some have gone in heav- 
ily for exotics and strange plants and 
trees. Some have artificial fish ponds 
and caves and mazes, all imitated and 
reproduced from something abroad. One 
gentleman in the beer line has spent 
millions on a vast garden, a feature of 
which is an artificial brook that turns 
a mill, and the mill is a reproduction of 
some mill in England. Another of the 
fortunate has a house with gold door 



50 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

loiobs and gold hinges. This seems to 
be the only original thing in Pasadena. 
Nobody in Italy or England ever 
thought of such a grand and useful de- 
vice, which is, I am sure, a credit to our 
native ingenuity. 

I asked what the owners of all these 
splendors did with their possessions, but 
the resulting information was meager. 
It appeared that many of them did not 
come to Pasadena at all; they just 
owned houses there, and covered them 
with gilt and things, or built them in 
the manner of Greek temples, because 
that was the proper thing to do and 
they must keep up with the procession 
of the millionaire order. But they 
didn't live in their temples and mosques 
and things. They just built them. Some 
millionaires occasionally lived in Pasa- 
dena, of course, but it didn't appear that 
their grottoes, towers, ferneries, sunken 
gardens, fish ponds, artificial brooks, 
water mills, gold hinges, gilt trimmings, 
trained monkeys, English butlers, and 
other accessories afforded them any par- 
ticular satisfaction. One native offered 
to bet that ninety per cent of the noble 
residents had never been inside their 



TRUSTIFIED ARCHITECTURE. 51 

own gardens and couldn't tell one arti- 
ficial brook from another. 

Nevertheless, Pasadena is a grand 
place and full of instruction to the in- 
quiring mind. Some persons have won- 
dered about the great American grab 
game, whether it were worth while. You 
sail in and wrest from your fellows the 
bread they need and you don't need ; you 
duck and dodge and twist and lie and 
scheme and evade or break the laws that 
you prate so much about; you help to 
make poverty, slums, destitution and 
disease; you help to create a condition 
in which the majority of mankind must 
live in darkness and insufficiency while 
you have a useless superfluity ; you steel 
your heart against every decent impulse 
until it becomes dead and cold and all 
the joy of life dies with it. You trample 
upon other men and ruin them and out- 
wit them ; and at last you join the sacred 
ranks and become a millionaire. What 
for? 

Well, here in Pasadena you can see 
what for. 

So that you can have a house with 
gold hinges and gold knobs or reproduce 
an English water-mill or construct a 
sunken garden that you never look at. 



52 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

Great, isn't it? Seems so reasonable 

as an object of life. 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

And now if you will just step from 
Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena to 
any one of the 260 rotten, stinking, 
filthy courts of Los Angeles and see how 
the people live in them, and in what con- 
ditions, you will, I am sure, be filled 
with complete admiration for the pres- 
ent organization of society and under- 
stand how sweet are its blessings. 

"There is no poverty out here, you 
know," says the complacent, well-fed, 
Los Angeles man, riding comfortably 
upon the backs of the populace. "It's 
of no use to tell us about slums; slums 
are confined to Eastern cities." 

Yes? Well, I had not noticed that. 
My impression was that California, the 
state of overflowing abundance, the 
world's granary and orchard, contains 
some of the worst poverty to be found 
on this earth. In spite of the optimistic 
opinions of my Los Angeles friends. I 
am still of that opinion. 

But don't let anything of that kind 
disturb you. Think of the sunken gar- 
dens and the artificial water-falls! 



NEVER MIND THE CRITICS. 53 

NEVER MIND THE CRITICS. 

Once in these columns I made some 
inadequate reference to George R. Kirk- 
patrick's extraordinary book, "War — 
What For?" Since then I have ob- 
served that the sissy boys and mental 
perverts that write the bulk of the liter- 
ary criticism in America have discov- 
ered that they are not pleased with Mr. 
Kirkpatrick's style and are, therefore, 
favoring him with some of their pon- 
derous and dull animadversions. 

Suppose we take a look at this. Any- 
body that knows anything about George 
Kirkpatrick knows that he is a master 
of English and could have put forth his 
book in about any style he might care 
to adopt. If he had so elected he could 
have turned out essays on "War" 
couched in dignified and classic phrases 
of the most fashionable type. Doubt- 
less if he had so desired he could have 
written his book in the dull, juiceless 
and atrophying manner habitually 
praised by the sissy boys. He might 
even by a supreme effort have killed his 
book by making it stupid enough to win 
their good word. 

But having a great message on a 



54 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

great subject he deliberately chose so 
to frame it that no reader could possibly 
escape the terrific import of every word 
in that message. 

Therefore, he has written a book that 
will last instead of one that the junk 
dealers will collect, as they collect all 
the favorite works of the sissy boys. 
"War— What For?" will be studied and 
referred to when butchers are using the 
polite essayists to wrap meat in, and 
when by no shred do the library heroes 
of the Miss Nancy school hang upon the 
human memory. 

But, anyway, I congratulate Mr. Kirk- 
patrick. He has won the hostility of 
the worst judges of literature in the 
world and that is an achievement worth 
while. For some years I have watched 
these literary invertebrates and their 
futile work and I have never yet seen 
a book fail if they could only be induced 
unanimously to condemn it. I know of 
no safer guide to good reading than to 
copper the criticisms of the jelly fish 
that pose as our foremost critics. If 
they say anything is bad you may be 
sure it is good; if they say it is very 
bad go right out and buy it because it 
is something you will want to read if 



NEVER MIND THE CRITICS. 55- 

you are more than nine years old and 
do not play marbles nor smoke cigar- 
ettes. 

And the best possible advice one can 
give to young writers is to study care- 
fully what the sissy boys admire and 
strive conscientiously to get as far as 
possible from anything like that. This 
is the sober truth. Run over the writers 
in America that have the largest audi- 
ences. Alfred Henry Lewis, Arthur 
Brisbane, David Graham Phillips, Ella 
Wheeler Wilcox, Robert Herrick, and 
you will find that every one of them is 
consistently damned by the critical fra- 
ternity of slush. Turn next to the writ- 
ers that are praised by the silly billies 
and you will not find those whose works 
are sold otherwise than by the pound. 

The moral is if you want an audience 
write so that the Atlantic Monthly will 
be horrified. If you want to write for 
paper stock consult the reviewers. 



56 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 
GOOD MEN WORSE THAN BAD MEN. 

An esteemed contributor writes to the 
Coming Nation objecting heatedly to my 
recent remarks about the futility of the 
American College education and its re- 
actionary influence. This gentleman 
says that many of the most radical and 
progressive leaders of the day are col- 
lege men and that the influence of the 
American university is almost always 
on the side of progress. 

Is it? Well, if it is my observation 
has been utterly worthless. If I know 
anything about life in my native land 
the college-bred element as a whole is 
the most dangerous we possess. 

At all times, brethren, this country is 
in far more danger from its good men 
than from its bad. 

Its bad men never preach that democ- 
racy is a failure and that what we want 
is a strong centralized government with 
one man to run it. That doctrine comes 
exclusively from the good men. 

Bad men never talk about the evils 
of a republican form of government and 
look yearningly upon a monarchy like 
that of Great Britain. Such ideas em- 
anate only from the good men. 



GOOD MEN WORSE THAN BAD MEN. 57 

Bad men never condone crime among 
the rich; never think there should be 
one kind of justice for the rich and an- 
other for the poor; never think it is 
dreadful for a hungry man to steal a 
loaf of bread, but admirable for a trac- 
tion company to steal a fifty million dol- 
lar franchise. Such views are confined 
exclusively to good men. 

Bad men never think of the working 
class as contemptible. Bad men never 
scheme to have union leaders hanged 
for crimes they have never committed; 
bad men never defend kidnaping; bad 
men do not believe in perverting the 
courts so as to punish those that speak 
too freely. Bad men do not sit around 
clubs and talk about "the ignorance of 
the masses/' nor uphold the right of 
wealth to rule, nor fall to the floor in 
adoration before the image of Mr. Mor- 
gan. All these things are done by good 
men. 

Bad men never tell you that the suf- 
frage is too extended in this country 
and that what we need is to have it 
restricted to men of intelligence and 
property. Bad men never feel that be- 
cause one has learned and forgotten 
something about Greek roots one is an 



58 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

eminent person. Bad men never think 
that because a man works with his 
hands and serves his times he is, there- 
fore, a contemptible object. All of these 
triumphs of the superior intellect are 
reserved for good men and are largely 
the product of the American university 
as at present conducted. 

That being the case I will take my 
chances with the bad men. 



HIRED MEN. 

The reactionary newspapers are now 
having the time of their lives about 
Seattle. 

Having recalled one mayor the city is 
trying to recall another. 

To the troglodyte mind that consti- 
tutes the essence of humor. Think of 
it! Got rid of one mayor; didn't like 
his successor; now trying to fire him 
and get another. Ha ! ha ! Isn't it fun- 
ny? The editorial writers in one col- 
umn explode their elephantine mirth 
and in another the paragraphers do 
their most amusing stunts with their 
refined wit and their caps and bells. At 
the masters' tables that these persons 
are kept to entertain all is applause and 
satisfaction. The burly barons want to 
send up halfpence to the clever jesters, 
and one offers a chicken-bone, only a 
little eaten from. Jest again, good mot- 
ley ! That is what you are kept for. 

Yes. But if we were not a nation of 
snobs, wherein would lie the jest? 

Suppose old Baron Gotrocks to fire 
his coachman and hire another, motley 
there does not do any stunts nor make 
any jests; the editorial elephant does 



60 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

not prance about with solemn glee. The 
Baron, says the troglodyte, has a right 
to hire and discharge as many coach- 
men as he may please. 

He certainly has. And what I want 
to know is why a community should 
have any less a right. 

A mayor is nothing but a community's 
coachman. 

See how Seventeenth century are the 
minds and natural instincts of an im- 
mense number of Americans. 

A government is one of two things. 
Either it is a government of the rude 
untaught rabble by persons divinely 
gifted to rule. Or it is a government by 
the people with no measure nor stand- 
ard of wisdom except the collective 
wisdom of the community. 

There is nothing between these two, 
whatever pretense we may please to 
make about it. 

When a man assumes that because 
he has succeeded in getting himself 
elected to office he, therefore, is endowed 
with superior wisdom and knows what 
is good for the people, he is merely 
adopting the good old theory of the di- 
vine right to rule. He may not be per- 



HIRED MEN. 61 

f ectly conscious of the fact, and he may 
on the platform prate much about the 
Republic and popular rule. But if he 
thinks that the people do not know what 
is good for them and his mission is to 
guide them in the way they should go 
he is subscribing to the doctrine that 
has cost many king persons their heads. 



62 Me passing show of capitalism. 

THE WHITE RABBIT AT HIS FEARSOME 
WORK. 

What I want to see is the founding 
in our universities and colleges of de- 
partments of Common Courage for the 
special training of White States Rabbits. 

I have been looking over the platform 
or statement of principles of the Insurg- 
ents. It is a grand document and might 
have been prepared by jelly fish or 
hares. 

It declares for honesty in office, a re- 
duction of the tariff, regulation of rail- 
road rates, regulation of public service 
corporations and let us all be good and 
we shall be happy. 

On this ringing declaration the gallant 
Insurgent band proposes to lead other 
White Rabbits in a grana assault upon 
some foe of their own kind — possibly 
the wrens or the barnyard fowl. 

The gentlemen that prepared this 
document knew perfectly well — if they 
knew enough to come in out of the rain 
— that not one of the things in which 
they declared their faith would be of the 
slightest effect upon any problem with 
which this country has to deal. On the 
same supposition they knew perfectly 



THE WHITE RABBIT AT WORK. 63 

well that all of their pretended reforms 
have been tried out by other nations and 
found to be worthless. 

They knew this when they prepared 
their declaration. They know it now. 
If you were to talk with them confiden- 
tially they would admit that they know 
it. 

But they would declare that the coun- 
try is not yet ready for any remedy that 
would really cure and they do not dare 
to go an inch in front of the bogey of 
public opinion that they have conjured 
up. 

In other words, they are afraid of 
their jobs. 

Now all these men are graduates of 
our renowned seats of learning. They 
represent the teachings of our academ- 
ic halls, so that what seems the most 
needed in those famous places is some- 
body with as much courage as a cat to 
teach the White Rabbits that they 
needn't really be afraid. 

No man need be afraid to utter any- 
thing he believes. The thing to fear is 
letting fall something that he doesn't 
fully believe or hasn't reasonably con- 
sidered. 



64 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

As soon as the university man gets 
into Congress he seems to live in deadly- 
terror and to shiver at the merest sug- 
gestion of saying what he thinks. It 
must be a sad state of mind. That is 
why I urge upon our favored million- 
aires liberal donations for the School 
of Common Courage. It would be of 
far more benefit to the human race than 
donating millions for the study of dis- 
eases that don't exist. 



THE ANGLO-SAXON SNOB. 

I do not see why Rabbi Wise was not 
about right when he advised his people 
not to participate in the great Peace 
Talkfest nor in any other polite reform 
function until their civil and social 
rights be recognized. I know a lot of 
these kid-glove reformers that are ex- 
tremely sweet on the Jews when they 
are trying to get money for some reform 
fad and a week after would leave any 
hotel that should harbor the self -same 
Jews. I am glad to see some of these 
hypocritical gentry getting swatted 
now. More power to your elbow, Rabbi. 
Swat again. 

I don't know how to account for the 
vile attitude of these Americans except 
on the theory that snobbery is inherent 
in the Anglo-Saxon blood and cannot 
easily be extracted. 

The essence of snobbery is to hate 
somebody that can be made to appear 
as your social inferior. 

In England the Anglo-Saxon snob has 
plenty of chances to enjoy this pleasure 
because the caste system, being per- 
fectly developed, presents society in 
well-defined layers and anybody above 



66 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

the Hooligans can pick out a layer be- 
neath and proceed to hate it until every- 
thing turns blue. 

In this country the layers are not so 
many nor so well-defined. Hence the 
Anglo-Saxon snob exercises his natural 
proclivities upon union labor men, Jews 
and negroes. 

That is about the size of it. 

Sweet business. 

With amazing patience and good na- 
ture the Jews overlook the injustice and 
indignities that are put upon them. 

But imagine the case reversed. Imag- 
ine, if you can, a group of American 
snobs suddenly ostracized and perse- 
cuted by a community of Jews. 

The welkin would resound with the 
outcry and the ears of Christendom be 
assailed with denunciations of injus- 
tice. 

I am not vindictive, but I wish this 
could happen, just once — for the sake 
of the object lesson. And I should like 
to pick out the snobs. 

Of course, it is utterly impossible. If 
such a crowd should ever be stranded in 
a Jewish community the Jews would 
merely invite them to come in and fetch 
out the pie, 



THE COMMENCEMENT DAY PROCURER. 67 
THE COMMENCEMENT DAY PROCURER. 

This is the season when the favorite 
preacher brushes up his long black coat, 
replenishes his stock of platitudes, molds 
his face to the expression of formal 
cant, and betakes himself to the school 
and university, where he tells the young 
men of the graduating classes what they 
should do to succeed in life. 

Does he fail to commend to them the 
advantages of harlotry? 

Not he, although he calls it by a dif- 
ferent name. 

I wish one of these gentry would just 
for once and the love of God speak to a 
graduating class exactly what he means 
when with his set phrases he urges upon 
them the splendors of material success 
in life. 

This is exactly what he means; I 
wish he would say it : 

"Young men, be prostitutes. If you 
are to be lawyers, understand that there 
is nothing worth while in your profes- 
sion except to get big fees, and the way 
to get big fees is to sell your talents 
to the big corporations and help them 
to evade the law. In return they will 
clothe you in fine raiment, feed you 



68 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

well and exhibit you in public as their 
kept creatures. 

"Do you wish to be judges? Follow 
the corporations. They put judges on 
the bench. 

"Have you talents or ambition for 
business? Attach yourselves to the 
corporations. They have pleasant quar- 
ters for you and an easy life. Study to 
please them; learn to cut down wages 
and swindle workingmen of their just 
claims. When a man is killed in your 
factory see that his widow gets no com- 
pensation, for by such means you will 
keep down your own expense account 
and stand well with the men that main- 
tain you. 

"Do you desire to be a doctor? Learn 
to pamper the vices and vagaries of the 
rich. Invent diseases for them that you 
may extract much money from their 
purses. Lie to them and fool them ; 
make them think you are useful to 
them. Keep close to them and be an 
adroit parasite and cogging knave that 
you may live well on the spoils. 

"Do you wish to be a journalist? 
Noble ambition ! Few of the kept crea- 
tures of capitalism fare better than the 
kept journalist. You shall live well if 



THE ANGLO SAXON SNOB, 69 

you follow that particular line of lewd- 
ness. But be alert — be vigilant. Ex- 
clude from your journal every line that 
can give offense to those that pay your 
board. Suppress the news of every un- 
toward event. Distort and color; duck, 
dodge and lie; invent where nothing 
real exists. Keep close to the banks 
and the department stores, for they are 
the true indices of your masters' will. 
Be the faithful, willing drudge of their 
pleasure; say what they wish you to 
say; keep silence where they prefer si- 
lence; denounce where they denounce. 
Fawn upon their favorites, kick from 
the premises those that they dislike. So 
shall you have money and ride in auto- 
mobiles and go to the opera and have 
distinction. So to you, leaning back in 
ease upon the cushions of your auto- 
mobiles, men shall point and say : 

" The famous Mr. X . Kept by 

the Peanut Trust/ 

"Or if you seek a public career and 
the honors of office, here is the easy 
way. Betray the community to the 
street railroad and electric light ban- 
dits; .they have much money to bestow 
upon their favorites. See that they get 
the franchise they want. See that the 



70 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

law is not enforced upon them. Play 
the game well, they may send you to the 
Senate or make you Governor. Be 
adroit ; pretend to denounce them while 
you serve them; they care nothing for 
denunciation. Pretend to favor reform. 
Speak with sad voice of the wrongs of 
the poor and the extortions of monop- 
olies. Base your campaign upon opposi- 
tion to the trusts. The trusts don't care 
so long as in the dark of the moon you 
slip over to them what they want. 

"Then they will pat you on the back 
and call you a good boy and make you 
mayor or maybe even President. 

"Win success. That is the thing. Get 
rich. Grab money from other men. 
Wrest it out of their hands. They need 
it and you do not, but let not that affect 
your mind. Get it away from them. 
Get it for yourself. Cringe and crawl 
and wallow and wade through filth, but 
get the money. The beautiful dough, 
the long green, the grand old Mazuma, 
that's the stuff. Get it. No matter how 
you get it. In the present organization 
of society, the only honor is to get the 
ready rhino. We teach you here the 
survival of the fittest. Then if you can 
get money away from another man that 



THE COMMENCEMENT DAY PROCURER. 71 

shows that you are fit and he is not and 
you are entitled to have it. That is 
sound morals. Go to it. 

"Do all these things and when you are 
grown old and life has lost its zest to 
your jaded appetite you will like to look 
back and think of the dirty things you 
have done. You will enjoy your remin- 
iscences as a kept creature. You will 
like to think of the men you wronged 
and the laws you evaded, the tricks you 
played and the lies you told. You will 
like to think that you helped your mas- 
ter to swindle the community about this 
project and to rob it for the sake ot 
that. 

"Perhaps you can think of some work- 
ingmen's compensation act that you 
helped to kill or some tenement house 
improvement law that you made a dead 
letter. Then it will be delicious for you 
to think of the little children in those 
tenements or of the orphans of slain 
workingmen. With thoughts of them 
you can sweeten old age. 

"Let no man tell you that you have 
any duty to your fellows. You have 
no duty except to yourself and that duty 
is to live well and have a good time — 
in the house of the man that keeps you." 



72 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

This is what the black-coated one 
really means. He will not clothe his 
idea in these words, but he might as 
well, for this is exactly the success to 
which he urges his young hearers. 

He will never by any chance be frank 
and honest with them. If he were for 
once, no more than once, I would make 
a contribution to a church. 

In the course of many years of obser- 
vation I have never known of one grad- 
uating day address that was not stuffed 
with lies and fakes. I have never heard 
of one that in any degree dealt with life 
as it is or the world as it exists. Every- 
one endeavored to cast a glamor over 
this thing called success and to lure 
young men into it by such means as they 
are lured into a Tenderloin dive. 

Cappers for the game. 

I suppose that if among this goodly 
band arose one man that might develop 
enough vertebra to mention to young 
men that the prostitution of their abili- 
ties is exactly as bad as any other kind 
and that the wages of prostitution are 
not worth having, the whole university 
world would cry aloud with horror and 
you couldn't get $10 for a school out of 
any millionaire. 



THE ^NGIX) &42£ON^SN0B. 73 

But at least how would it do to inti- 
mate now and then that the only suc- 
cess in this world that amounts to a 
hoot is success in service and in use? 

I suggest it for a change. I should 
think even the platitudinous orators 
would weary in time of the other thing. 

Moreover, it would have the advan- 
tage of being true — which in these ad- 
dresses would be enough of a novelty to 
make it attractive. 



74 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM 
INTERESTS GRAB THE MAGAZINES. 

Years ago the newspaper press of 
America passed into the control of the 
powers of evil and became the valets 
and sooty slaves of the corporations and 
thieves. 

These got the strangle-hold on the 
newspapers by controlling the adver- 
tisements. A newspaper lives on its 
advertisements. The bulk of its adver- 
tisements come from department stores. 
The Interests got the department stores 
or the banks that feed such stores and 
in a moment they had the newspapers at 
their mercy. 

Thus controlled, the newspapers fell 
to lying about and distorting conditions. 
The power of free utterance passed ut- 
terly from them, and with it their influ- 
ence vanished. The public knew noth- 
ing of the secret of the transformation, 
but it recognized instantly the false note 
in the editor's speech. It said : "These 
be the words of a harlot," and turned 
away. 

The magazine came to be the only 
representative of a free press in Amer- 
ica. Encouraged by public support it 
did the work of a tribune of the people. 



INTERESTS GRAB THE MAGAZINES. 75 

It tore the masks from the thieves and 
revealed the burglars. 

The Interests tried to get the maga- 
zines by controlling the advertising. 
They found that magazine advertising 
is too big a field to be controlled. They 
could take away several pages of Beef 
Trust or other ads., but a thousand men 
filled other pages. 

Then the Interests began to get the 
magazines through the process of con- 
solidation and purchase, often through 
subtle, secret and unsuspected ways. 

One after another the magazines that 
had been called radical began to be 
gathered into the net. 

One stood out alone. It printed ar- 
ticles exposing the great railroad swin- 
dles and many other frauds practiced 
upon the people. It was threatened 
many times, but kept on. Finally it 
printed an article exposing the deals by 
which the New York, New Haven & 
Hartford railroad has been scooped in- 
side out. This involved some of the 
most powerful forces among the Inter- 
ests. They got wind in advance of the 
publication and tried to bulldoze the 
editor into suppressing it. He refused 
and the article came out. 



76 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

Then they started in to crush him. 
They have just succeeded after eight 
months of incessant fighting. 

Now the magazine field is their own. 
It is as much their own as the news- 
paper field. They will operate it more 
adroitly than they have operated^the 
newspapers. They will not repeat their 
previous blunders; the magazine valet 
will not go out and fight openly for its 
masters. It will make the smug pre- 
tense of being on the side of progress. 
It will support the "Roosevelt policies/' 
so-called, it will be strong for conserva- 
tion, it will praise Insurgents and Insur- 
gency, it will be strong for morality, 
piety, reforms, and pillow-shams. But 
it will never again reveal conditions as 
they really are. 

Watch it. See if this does not turn 
out to be absolutely true. 

The Interests don't care a hang about 
reforms, Insurgency, conservation, mor- 
ality, piety and all such twaddle. All 
they want is that there shall be no mag- 
azine that will dare to reveal the truth 
about fundamental conditions or the 
facts about specific burglaries and bur- 
glars. 



INTERESTS GRAB THE MAGAZINES. 77 

That is what they wanted. That is 
what they have now secured. 

It is a well-tamed team that now trots 
sedately along under their whip and 
rein. The newspaper and the magazine. 
From this time on you will not be able 
to tell which is the more docile and 
serviceable. 



78 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 
THE HOLY SMOOTHERERS. 

Here is an illustration of the way 
things go in our broad land. In 1906 
Everybody's Magazine (then radical, 
now conservative), published an article 
in which incidentally the assertion was 
made that the mail contracts between 
the American railroads and the national 
government were fraudulent and un- 
fair, resulting in an annual loot of many 
million dollars for the railroads. 

Mr. George B. Cortelyou, a Roosevelt 
pet, was then Postmaster General. In 
his annual report for that year he took 
up the statements made in the Every- 
body's article, quoted them, and then 
categorically denied them and de- 
nounced the author as an untruthful 
person, the whole forming one of the 
most extraordinary passages to be 
found in any government document. 

Loud applause from the kept press. 
Also, of course, from Crazy Horse. The 
press almost universally quoted Cortel- 
you's denunciation — which was sent out 
by a bureau engaged in disseminating 
tainted news — and with pleasure on its 
brow pointed the moral against the 
muckrakers. 



THE HOLY SMOOTHERERS. 79 

"Look at this sample," it said. "Here 
is the perfect test. This muckraker has 
been proved a liar. He told lies about 
the postoffice department. All muck- 
rakers are liars. This is now clearly 
seen and no one should heed anything 
they say." 

This grand old chorus swelled from 
shore to shore and no doubt had its ef- 
fect. 

Mr. Cortelyou retired from office and 
was succeeded by Mr. Hitchcock. 

On June 18, 1911, Mr. Hitchcock, 
Postmaster General, issued a statement 
in which he said that after investigating 
the subject he had found that the com- 
pensation paid to the railroads for car- 
rying the mails is grossly excessive and 
that every year the railroads are getting 
from the government at least $9,000,000 
more than they ought to get. 

It took the department five years to 
discover and acknowledge the facts eas- 
ily gathered by the muckraker, who is 
now officially shown to have told the 
truth. 

On Postmaster General Hitchcock's 
showing the railroads have had in that 
time $45,000,000 of loot from the na- 
tional treasury. 

How about it? 



80 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

There exists in this country a certain 
smug, pretentious, poisonous kind of 
publication whose chief business is to 
assure the public that all is well with us 
and whosoever says to the contrary is a 
low, vile person and not to be consid- 
ered. Roosevelt is at Oyster Bay : all is 
well with his country — that sort of 
thing. The most conspicuous types of 
these holy smootherers are the Outlook 
and the American Magazine. It is 
chiefly owing to such influences that it 
is so difficult to get anything done in 
this country, for they work under a 
specious disguise of reform to discredit 
anybody that really purposes to do any- 
thing. 

In the instance I have just cited the 
smootherers and their kind seem to have 
cost the nation about $45,000,000 in five 
years. The history of the times is full 
of other instances. The Little Rollos 
and the Old Docs are a costly bill. It 
would be money in our pockets if we 
could remove them all to some remote 
congenial spot where they could smoke 
their cigarettes and wear their knee 
pants and exude optimism without harm 
to anyone except themselves. 



PITY THE POOR RAILROADS. 

You may be interested to observe on 
your railroad time table folder (if you 
are traveling at this time) one page or 
two pages set apart for a pitiful appeal 
to your sympathies in behalf of the 
poor distressed railroad companies of 
your native land. 

These poor but deserving institutions, 
it appears, are now sorely beset by 
wicked persons that are trying to de- 
prive them of their little incomes, and 
your kind heart is appealed to that you 
may prevent the horrible outrage. 

I read these things on all my time 
tables and I am glad to see them. The 
statements they contain are chiefly lies, 
the statistics they offer are fictitious and 
the appeals are swindles, but I read 
them with keen and hearty enjoyment. 
I hope to read many of them as time 
goes on. Rattling over the insecure 
bridges and murderous grade crossings 
of the American railroad nothing is 
better calculated to divert your mind 
than to read one of these appeals. You 
can almost for a time forget the rotten 
roadbed and the imminent risk of dis- 



82 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

aster. Therefore, they are good things 
and ought to be encouraged. 

You can almost forget many things, 
but you can never quite forget this, that 
if the American railroads had not been 
looted ana stolen inside out by two 
generations of expert exploiters they 
would not now present an aspect of 
physical wreck or be so bedeviled in 
their finances that they must practice 
the bunco-man's art to keep going. 

However, the appeals to the public on 
behalf of these tottering old concerns 
are pleasant reading for the citizen, 
robbed and maltreated these many 
years. Some change since the days of 
"the public be damned" — eh, brethren? 
The fear of God worketh many marvels 
and it seems to have been thrown suc- 
cessfully into the hearts of the gentle- 
men now operating the railroad swindle. 
They are no fools. They can read elec- 
tion returns as well as another, even 
after capitalism has done its best to 
doctor those returns and suppress the 
Socialist vote. 



A LITTLE CHAPTER IN HYSTERIA. 83 
A LITTLE CHAPTER IN HYSTERIA. 

Several years ago when I lived in Chi- 
cago the head waiter at that excellent 
caravansary, the Windermere hotel, was 
a very able person named Frank Long. 
He knew his business. In the course of 
some years of knocking about the world 
I have never seen his superior as the 
chief executive of a great dining room. 
He was able, courteous, quick, obliging 
and he had an almost singular faculty 
of seeing and noting twenty-two differ- 
ent things at the same time and never 
turning a hair. The huge place went 
like clock work when he was in com- 
mand. 

Yet he had one defect. He was what 
is called "colored." He had the quiet, 
self-possessed bearing of a man that has 
observed much, considered much and 
is sure of himself; his manners and 
conversation were polished and agree- 
able ; he was a Christian, if that counts 
for anything. But he was about the 
color of cafe an lait. So that, of course, 
settled his case. 

About two years ago he suffered a 
stroke of part paralysis and after a 
brave struggle he gave up his job, to the 



84 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

great regret of all the old-timers like 
myself. 

He had been thrifty and saved a little 
money. This spring it occurred to him 
that a wise provision in his case would 
be a home of his own. So he looked 
about, found a very modest little house 
within his means and bought it. 

The neighbors saw him going in and 
out and began some excited inquiries. 
When they found that he had bought the 
place a wild howl went up and they 
chased after the agent. He could do 
nothing in spite of all their threats, for 
the transaction had been closed ; so they 
called an indignation meeting and sub- 
scribed a common defense fund and put 
it into the agent's hands with instruc- 
tions to save them at any cost. 

The agent sent for Mr. Long and ex- 
plained the situation. The paralyzed 
man was neither surprised nor much 
pained. He had been accustomed all his 
life to pay the penalty of his color. But 
his pride was touched a little. He said : 

"If they don't want me to live in their 
neighborhood I don't care for their so- 
ciety, either. But what can I do? I've 
paid the money, the place is mine." 



A little: CHAPTER IN HYSTERIA. 85 

"Would $1,100 more than you paid 
for it be any inducement to you to sell 
it?" asked the agent. 

"Show me the $1,100," said Long and 
in five minutes walked out of the place 
with the money. 

Whereupon the neighborhood breath- 
ed a sigh of relief. It had escaped the 
presence of a quiet, intelligent, unfor- 
tunate man whose color is about two 
shades darker than my own. 

This seemed to me a pretty good tip. 

I am now organizing the Race Hys- 
teria Exploitation Company which looks 
to me like the biggest money-maker of 
the times, and the best chance to exploit 
the exploiters. All we need is about ten 
dollars capital and a man with a dark 
skin and we can be paying 1,000 per 
cent dividends every month. Besides 
the plan has certain elements of sardon- 
ic humor not without refreshing qual- 
ities in this heated season. 

If these people will have their snob- 
bery why not make them pay for the 
luxury ? 



86 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 
THE VALUE OF EFFICIENCY. 

An esteemed clerical gentleman in an 
Illinois city writes me a vigorous pro- 
test against some remarks recently- 
made in these columns about sermons to 
graduating classes and the strained and 
perverted emphasis that these efforts 
always put upon what is called Success. 
This gentleman says I don't go much to 
church (which is true) and if I did I 
should know that in these days clergy- 
men preach a very different doctrine 
from that I denounced. They now in- 
culate a broad and advanced theory of 
social duty. 

As an evidence of my error and of 
the kind of dope that is really handed 
out to the youthful mind he is good 
enough to send me a copy of his own 
recent sermon to a graduating class in 
his community. 

It is a very good sermon of the kind, 
or at least it seems so to me. The sub- 
ject is "Efficiency," and the burden of 
the message is that young persons just 
entering upon their careers should be 
efficient. If they are efficient they will 
never lack for employment and they will 
be of much use in the world. The effi- 



THE VALUE OF EFFICIENCY, 87 

cient man is the demand of today; so- 
ciety suffers for the lack of efficiency. 

No doubt. But I don't see how any- 
thing could better illustrate the kind of 
slip-shod and half-baked thinking that 
the gentlemen of the cloth habitually 
indulge in. 

Efficiency is in itself a most admir- 
able thing; but why be efficient under 
the existing system of society? 

Obviously, the efficient man, under the 
present system, can but add to the sum 
total of human depression. There are 
not enough jobs to go around. If he 
does more than the average, then some- 
body else will have less of a job. If he 
does the work of two men, which is the 
usual standard of desirable efficiency, 
he adds one man to the army of the 
unemployed. 

Furthermore, the greater his effi- 
ciency the greater is the ratio of wealth 
that he creates for his employer and 
not for himself. 

Labor creates wealth, Capital takes 
the greater part of the wealth created 
by Labor. The greater the efficiency of 
Labor the greater are the profits of 
Capital; not only absolutely, but pro- 
portionately. That is to say, the per- 



88 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

centage taken by Capital is smallest in 
the case of unskilled Labor and great- 
est in the case of skilled Labor; and 
the greater the skill of Labor the larger 
the percentage that Capital takes. 

All the technical schools and manual 
training adjuncts merely create addi- 
tional profits for Capital, absolutely and 
proportionately. 

In other words, the more efficient you 
are the more you are robbed. All 
knowledge, all skill, all training and 
most ambitions on the part of the toil- 
ers only fatten the employing class, be- 
cause things are so arranged that the 
enormous and unreasonable advantage 
of Capital increases as the productivity 
of the toiler is increased. 

No doubt efficiency is a grand, ad- 
mirable thing; but these are the facts 
about it. Why not tell them? Also, 
why not say that this is the reason why 
the exploiting class is so enthusiastic 
about technical schools and manual 
training departments and institutions 
that produce handy strike-breakers. 
This is the reason why you can get 
$100,000 appropriated for a manual 
training annex to a public school when 
you cannot get a cent for sufficient ac- 



THE VALUE OF EFFICIENCY. 89 

commodations for ordinary purposes. 
And this is the reason why in every 
large city thousands of children are 
either shut out of the schools entirely 
or limited to half attendance, while the 
manual training departments get all the 
money they need. 

Now either the class-day clergymen 
know these things or they do not. If 
they do not, then they do not know 
enough of the common facts of life as 
it is to be giving out any tips to the 
young. And if they know them and 
conceal them, then they are exactly the 
kind of reverend fakers that my com- 
ments tried to reach. 

The customary answer to a dilemma 
like this is that the time is not ripe to 
speak frankly about such matters; the 
people are not prepared for the truth. 

Oh bosh ! 

The time is always ripe for speaking 
the truth. If any of these clerical 
brothers know the facts and conceal 
them, they are exactly like the white 
rabbit statesmen that make such a piti- 
ful showing in Congress and elsewhere 
by ducking in palpitating terror at the 
mere shadow of an opinion. I should 
think such a clergyman no better than 



90 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

an Insurgent, and an Insurgent is well 
known to naturalists as the most timid 
of all animals. 

So long as we continue the system 
under which men toil to create wealth 
and do not possess the wealth that they 
create, so long the virtue of efficiency 
and most other good things will be per- 
verted and turned to nothing or worse. 
The only thing of any importance at 
this present time is the destruction of 
the system that thus converts all good 
into infinite evil. A clergyman that 
will mention this simple but pivotal fact 
to his youthful flock will thereby do a 
greater service to them and to mankind 
than is contained in all the addresses 
to graduating classes that have ever 
been uttered up to this time. Get this 
into their minds and we can dispense 
with any exhortations on the subject 
of dear old efficiency. 



STOPPING COMETS WITH EDICTS. 91 

STOPPING COMETS WITH EDICTS. 

The same quantity of oil that in the 
great days of competition cost to pro- 
duce $100 is now produced for $35. The 
troglodytes and Cave Dwellers want to 
restore the cost to $100. They are the 
wondrous geniuses of the age, but you 
can bet that it will take more genius 
to carry out what they want than it 
takes to bray in Congress about it. 

There was once an eminent gentleman 
of the Church that undertook to stop a 
comet by issuing an edict against it. 
Eleven generations of writers have 
since been unutterably grateful to that 
gentleman for he furnished them with 
a jest perennial and an illustration al- 
ways apt and amusing. 

So in time to come writers will look 
back with profound thankfulness to 
Senator Cummins and the other Cave 
Dwellers of the present Congress for 
having backed the pope and the comet 
off the map. He tried with a piece of 
paper to stop a star wandering through 
illimitable space and they tried by put- 
ting somebody into jail to turn back 
inevitable and world-wide evolution. 

Put men into jail for being driven 



92 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

along by a vast, irresistible wave of 
economic development inconceivably 
greater than all the laws ever made by 
man! Put them into jail for doing the 
thing they can by no possibility avoid 
doing! Put them into jail for a uni- 
versal transformation never the work 
nor the design nor invention of any man 
nor any set of men! Put them into 
jail because the steam engine was in- 
vented and machinery built! Put them 
into jail because the railroad train has 
displaced the stage coach and the steam- 
ship has driven the sailing vessel from 
the ocean! Put them into jail because 
we can travel 1,000 miles a day instead 
of fifty! Put them into jail because 
we communicate with written signs! 
Put them into jail because we no longer 
use stone hatchets nor eat raw meat i 

That's the idea. Put everybody into 
jail that does not live in a cave. 

If these intellectual pre-Adamites 
would for once stick their heads out of 
their ancient dwelling places and take 
note of what is going on in the world 
they might have some notion of the 
ridiculous spectacle they cut. 

Exactly what is taking place in the 
United States in the way of trustifica- 



STOPPING COMETS WITH EDICTS. 93 

tion, combination, consolidation, unifi- 
cation, exactly that same process is 
going on everywhere else in the world 
and in exactly the same way. 

It goes on in every corner of the globe, 
not because of the horrible machina- 
tions of bad men, but because the thing 
is the inevitable product of universal 
conditions. 

The Cave Dwellers cannot see this 
and the Old Doc Swindles will not. But 
the intelligent part of the community 
ought to arise to prevent these persons 
from making the country the world's 
laughing stock and wasting any more 
of our good money in these lunatic pro- 
ceedings. We have had enough. 



BITTERNESS OF SOCIALISM. 

In certain highly refined circles much 
Is made of what is called "the bitter- 
ness of Socialists. ,, 

I suppose that at times we do seem 
to lack sweetness and light. Perhaps 
we are to blame for this lack. Per- 
haps we should always be gentle and 
calm and courteous and full of ladylike 
resentment and prunes. 

But what would you really expect 
men and women to be when they real- 
ize that the world is filled with unnec- 
essary suffering, that every day of the 
present system slaughters more human 
beings than were ever killed on any 
battlefield, that because of the present 
system the world is dark with cruelty 
and wrong, that because of it millions 
upon millions of lives are led in misery 
and pain that might be joyous and 
happy, that because of it four in every 
five children in the world are doomed 
to lives of drudgery and insufficiency, 
light is quenched and ignorance tri- 
umphs ? 

What would you expect us to be, 
knowing all this, and knowing that it 
is all unnecessary, and knowing that it 



BITTERNESS OF SOCIALISM. 95 

is maintained upon mankind by force 
and fraud? 

Bitter? Why, yes, I am bitter. God 
send me more bitterness. I do most 
deliberately believe that if I could for 
one moment acquiesce in all this infinite 
wrong I should be worse than one of 
the spoilers. I would have none of that 
blood on my soul. 

Therefore, with what voice we have 
we utter bitter protest and utter it with- 
out ceasing. Not against any individ- 
ual, knowing that those that profit by 
this dreadful thing are also its products, 
but against the system that chains the 
limbs and poisons the hearts of men. 

Those that fifty or sixty years ago in 
this country protested against chattel 
slavery were in their own time called 
bitter. But looking back now we see 
that in no other way could they make 
fitting objection to the intolerable evil 
they combated. What compromise can 
men make with a system of hell? And 
we that protest against the greater sla- 
very and the world-wide evil, we can 
do it in no holiday terms if we would be 
true to the faith that is in us. 

And, anyway, what do we care what 
men say of us? We are not fighting 



96 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

for popularity nor for good report nor 
applause nor to be of the winning party, 
nor for any other object in the world 
except to abolish this vile thing. We 
shall not abolish it by speaking well of 
it nor being on good terms with it, but 
only by hating it and showing to the 
world its hideousness. 

It is nothing to be called bitter or 
fanatical or narrow or bigoted; it is 
much that a man should feel he has lost 
no chance to protest. 



IN MEMORY OF JULY 14, 1789. 

Praise God from whom all blessings 
flow, we are about to crown another 
king and the ousiness of the world sus- 
pends while w T ith awe and genuflections 
we watch the august ceremony. 

In the country where this king is to be 
crowned is more poverty and more mis- 
ery than in any other country in Europe. 
A million men and women rise up in the 
morning without knowing where they 
will lie down at night. One-fifth of the 
population is described as living upon 
the starvation line or below r it. ■ 

In the city where we are to celebrate 
this momentous occasion, one person in 
four is buried at public expense, and 
nearly two million persons dwell in 
such conditions as shame civilization, 
deny humanity, menace the community 
with epidemics, people it with deform- 
ity and degeneracy, and make life one 
long horror. 

In this city many thousands of men 
roam about begging in vain for work. 
Yearly, hundreds of mothers are ar- 
rested because they smother their chil- 
dren rather than try to rear them in 



98 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

the unspeakable hell wherein they them- 
selves must dwell. 

In this city you may see in one huge, 
overcrowded and hideous region of it, 
vast swarms of listless, inert, underfed, 
undeveloped creatures shaped like hu- 
man beings and yet without one beauty 
in their lives to redeem life from abject 
brutishness ; men with faces like tallow 
and hands like claws; poisoned in body 
and stunted in mind; incapable physi- 
cally, mentally and morally; misshapen 
and incomplete; crushed and maimed 
and despoiled of man's attributes, the 
frightful products of the modern in- 
ferno. You may see vast swarms of 
them today and vaster swarms tomor- 
row, for relentlessly day after day their 
numbers swell and the deadly threat of 
them grows in the face of England and 
of this king now to be crowned with 
loud acclaim. 

In this country now resounding with 
plaudits and hymnals of praise, what 
are known as the dangerous trades slay 
every year more persons than were ever 
slain on any modern battlefield. Every 
year these trades, with the unhealthy 
dwellings, insufficient food, poisoned air, 
dreary lives and monotonous drudgery 



IN MEMORY OF JULY 14. 1789. 99 

that are the portion of the majority of 
its inhabitants, slay more persons than 
were ever slain in any modern war. 

All of these slaughters are unneces- 
sary ; all of them are so many murders ; 
all of them are so many indictments of 
the existing system of which the gra- 
cious king and his gracious crowning 
are but the type and the highest ex- 
pression. 

What do we care? Te deum lauda- 
mus. We are crowning another king. 

Crowning him in a country where 
darkness broods and poverty spreads; 
where already poverty has wrought the 
physical and mental decline of the huge 
classes at the bottom of the glittering 
social pyramid ; where insanity increases 
so rapidly that all the alienists are 
alarmed; where tuberculosis increases 
so steadily that all the health authori- 
ties are alarmed ; where in twenty years 
the average physical stature has so di- 
minished that three times it has been 
necessary to lower the standards for 
admission to the army; where decency, 
comfort and sufficiency are limited to 
fewer than one-fifth of the inhabitants ; 
where in the teeming slums every year 
come into the world a hundred thousand 



100 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

babies with deformed bodies and dread- 
ful weaknesses; where to the majority 
of the population life is without hope, 
joy, light or opportunity. 

In such a country, in the midst of a 
rising bleak sea of poverty and pain, 
a handful of the Lord's Anointed have 
erected a little island for themselves 
and their fellows and cheer themselves 
into hysteria because they have another 
king. 

All about them is acute suffering and 
grisly death. What do they care? Here 
comes the grand procession, moving 
slowly forward with pomp and majesty, 
music and dazzling pageantry; and 
every foot of the way it wades through 
blood and rolls over the bodies of those 
that must give up their lives to sustain 
the existing system, of which this is 
the type and the perfect expression. 

Grand spectacle! No wonder the 
crowds cheer, the bands play fervent 
music, the organs peal, the cannons fire 
salutes and long lines of Americans fall 
prostrate in hysterical adoration. No 
wonder we rush madly to behold a cere- 
mony so inspiring and so indicative of 
progress ; no wonder the American mag- 
azines illustrate it in colors and on their 



IN MEMORY OF JULY 14, 1789. 101 

cover pages ; no wonder American news- 
papers pour over it a Niagara of slush 
and nauseous guff; no wonder the busi- 
ness of the world suspends while with 
bated breath we watch the august cere- 
mony. 

In the midst of this mad carnival of 
death and misery we are crowning a 
king. 

Glory be. 

At one stage of the august ceremony 
the august Archbishop of something or 
other took in his hand the crown that 
still in the Twentieth century is the 
emblem of sovereignty and power, and 
after many curious and barbaric tricks 
he put it upon the gracious king's head. 

Just this moment suppose there could 
suddenly have appeared in Westminster 
Abbey a picture of the real England 
over which this gracious king is gra- 
ciously pleased to rule. Suppose just 
one family of East End degenerates 
should have marched down the aisle and 
thrust their tallowy faces and scrawny 
claws before the holy Archbishop and 
gracious King. Suppose they should 
have shown their deformities and de- 
manded vengeance upon the system that 
made them what they are. I guess that 



102 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

would have jarred the proceedings for 
a moment or two. I guess that would 
have shocked the sensitive nerves of the 
better class, exclusive proprietors of 
the royal pageantry. 

Yet that spectacle, incongruous and 
strange as it would seem, would have 
been infinitely more typical and appro- 
priate than anything that graced the 
splendors of Coronation Day. 

It would have been typical of the real 
England. 

The splendors, decorations, gew-gaws, 
gorgeous uniforms, and monkey-shows 
are not typical of anything except of 
Bedlam and a form of government as 
obsolete as the dodo. However, what 
do we care about all this? We are 
crowning another king — June, 1911. 
One hundred and twenty-two years ago 
France proclaimed the end of the king 
superstition and the beginning of the 
reign of man. And one hundred and 
twenty-two years later we are repeat- 
ing the same old tricks with still greater 
fervency. In the largest city of the 
world, in the country that affects to 
lead civilization. 

At a time when poverty and the 
accumulated evils of a frightful social 



IN MEMORY OF JULY 14. 1789. 103 

system threaten the life of that country 
and cover its government with blood, it 
stops to spend unlimited treasure upon 
a mediaeval mummery that represents 
only retrogression and the backward 
path. 

Te deum laudamus. This is indeed a 
great day. 



A MATTER OF SUPERIOR MINDS. 

A professor of history in a Western 
university was addressing his class. 

'"You who have the advantage of a 
college education are especially fitted to 
take part in government, which is nat- 
urally a matter of superior minds. I 
should like to encourage you to uphold 
your responsibility by seeking office 
whenever you properly can." 

A young man interrupted. 

"Pardon me, Professor, but what are 
superior minds?" 

The professor regarded him sternly. 
"After having had the benefit of a col- 
lege training, sir, don't you expect that 
your own will be superior?" 

"No more than that laborer's will 
when he has finished digging the ditch 
on the campus," said the student, point- 
ing through the classroom window. 

In the midst of the scandalized cackle 
and flutter that followed the professor 
delivered himself of this sentiment, "In 
that case you have failed to understand 
your privileges and you will probably 
gravitate to digging ditches yourself." 

Of all forces that contribute to the 
life of that hoary old fraud about the 



A MATTER OF SUPERIOR MINDS. 105 

"superior mind" with us the university 
is the most active. No fallacy has done 
more harm or is more of an obstacle to 
progress than the notion that some men 
are especially equipped to rule and that 
it behooves the common herd to make 
way for them and look up to them. We] 
can thank our universities for its per- 
petuation. 

The fact is that sympathy with de- 
mocracy cannot exist in a privileged 
community such as gathers about an in- 
stitution for higher learning in this 
country. The university should be, and 
will be, a vast power for the common^ 
good. But what does it contribute now? 

Nearly all of our universities and 
colleges live through private gifts, en- 
dowments, which yield them dividends 
and interest. In other words, they are" 
beneficiaries of capitalism, leeches upon 
the industrial body, absorbing wealth' 
wrung from the privation and igno- 
rance of the toilers and using it to pro- 
mote comfort and education among the^ 
favored few. It is inevitable that they 
should become supporters of the present 
system to which they owe their exist- 
ence. . :J 

Many professors and teachers, en- 



106 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

gaged in scientific work and research, 
are adding to the world's stock of 
knowledge and are thereby valuable 
citizens. But for direct influence upon 
the youth of the land what road does 
their service take? 

Material success, first of all, is the 
teaching of the American university. 
Young men learn to look upon the bene- 
factors of the institution as the models, 
upon all that are able to pile dirty dol- 
lar on dirty dollar as great, admirable, 
successful. They absorb this attitude 
from the trend of the instruction and 
from the very atmosphere. 

Is this help to the coming nation in 
the struggle against creed, cynicism, 
oppression and extortion? 

Social distinctions are the teachings 
of the American university. Here is 
the vast hothouse of the snobbishness, 
arrogance and caste madness from 
which we suffer. Every college com- 
munity is divided into grades and ranks 
on a basis of wealth or fraternity mem- 
bership. Every college community has 
a residuum of "barbarians" detested 
and scorned by their social betters. 
Here we teach a young man that he 
stands on a higher plane than certain 



A MATTER OF SUPERIOR MINDS. 107 

of his fellows, and that the chief busi- 
ness of life is to kick the first lot and 
ingratiate himself with the second. 

Is this help to the coming nation in 
the struggle against inequality, privi- 
lege and autocracy? 

Reverence for leaders and appointed 
masters is inculcated by the American 
university, History is still made a mat- 
ter of kings, heroes, idols and villains. 
The national failing for some man to 
worship and some man to damn, which 
blocks lucid and sane consideration of 
real issues, is directly encouraged. The 
true significance of the mighty move- 
ments in world progress is never 
touched. 

Is this help to the coming nation in 
the struggle against dictatorship, mis- 
government and capitalist dominance? 

Misconception of the vast and im- 
mediate problems of industrial compli- 
cation is the work of the American uni- 
versity. This is possibly its greatest 
triumph, wrought by means of a hazy 
mystery it calls "political economy." 
The phrases and formulae used by teach- 
ers of this subject may have some re- 
lation to voodooism, witchcraft, mum- 



108 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

bo jumbo or demonology, but they come 
no closer to the affairs of life. 

Is this help to the coming nation in 
the struggle against class oppression, 
the capitalist failure and the debase- 
ment of labor? 

Is the coming nation getting any help 
from the American university? If it is, 
it is in spite of the university's influ- 
ence. 

I know a place where a man can fit 
himself very much better for being of 
use in the world than at a university. 

A machine shop. 



NOSTRUMS AND QUACKS. 

As a people we are strong on nos- 
trums and quacks. We have a marvel- 
ous reverence for patent pain killers 
and for the old Doc Swindles that ad- 
minister them. At the present stage 
in the country's progress it seems es- 
sential that some patent pain killer and 
some layer on of hands should be before 
the public eye in order that quiet and 
content may possess the public mind. 

For instance, John says to James, 
"Things are getting pretty bad, some- 
thing ought to be done to back down 
these trusts." And James has been used 
to reply, "Oh, yes, but look at the Sher- 
man Law; that will make 'em be good." 

Or else, John says to James, "It's 
pretty fierce about the interests and 
they ought to be checked." And James 
has been used to reply, "Oh, yes, but 
look at Roosevelt, or Wilson, or Hughes. 
They're the boys. Leave the trouble to 
them. They've got the proper dope." 

This state of affairs is due partly to 
indifference, partly to the American 
craving for "leaders" and partly to the 
skillful advertising done by the pirates, 



110 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

who have to keep us docile while they 
pick our pockets. 

We are taught to look to individuals 
as the hope and the sole hope for better 
conduct of affairs. We are taught to 
look to remedies like the Sherman Law 
as the only means by which these sav- 
iors can drive the distemper from the 
political body. 

It ought to begin to be somewhat ap- 
parent that quacks and quacksalvers 
have no possible bearing upon our 
troubles. Just as the evils of monopoly, 
oppression, poverty are not the work of 
any individual or any legal instrument 
but the product of conditions, so it must 
soon be evident that sufficiency, equal- 
ity, freedom cannot be furthered by any 
individual or any legal instrument. The 
whole rotten system is wrong and the 
time is coming when the people will 
get up and kick the system into the 
street, along with the entire outfit of 
fake medicines and fake practitioners. 

Meanwhile the question occurs as to 
what will be advanced to take the place 
of the Specific. The Sherman Law has 
had its day. Its popularity cannot long 
be maintained. The quacks will have 
to find something else. People can be 



NOSTRUMS AND QUACKS. Ill 

made to bite, all right enough, but they 
can't be made to bite indefinitely at the 
same thing. 

Still, there is never any lack of nost- 
rums or of quacks. 



INTERESTS WORKING FOR WAR. 

It is, of course, useless at any time 
to try to beat any sense into the heads 
of the peace advocates of the Carnegie 
tribe. They are so utterly obsessed 
with the belief that they can abolish 
war by eating dinners and talking plati- 
tudes that they cannot listen to one 
word about things as things actually 
are. But if about that devoted band of 
dinner eaters and flub-dub orators there 
is one person capable of thinking a little 
one would imagine that the present situ- 
ation in Japan would give him a jar. 

That is, supposing that he really 
cares a rap about the subject and really 
believes in peace. This is probably a 
violent supposition, but some persons 
that do not know Carnegie frequently 
indulge in it. 

Here, then, is the way the case 
stands : 

Japan is preparing for war. With 
whom? I don't know, but not with the 
Esquimaux, certainly, nor with the 
Patagonians. 

Just at this juncture comes along 
what is called the Four Power Loan and 



INTERESTS WORKING FOR WAR. 113 

throws the Japanese people into a fer- 
ment. 

What is the Four Power Loan? It 
is a device by which the United States, 
France, Germany and England joined 
hands and compelled China to borrow 
money that she did not want and did 
not need. 

One result of this arrangement is that 
Japan is blocked in her plans for de- 
velopment and extension in Manchuria, 
where the Four Powers become domi- 
nant and Japan is kicked out. 

I don't know the exact hocus-pocus 
and web of lies by which this deal is 
defended. I guess nobody knows. Per- 
haps no defense is needed. There was 
something valuable left outside the iron 
vault and the international burglars 
took it. 

Instantly the Japanese press breaks 
into a clamor of protest. It denounces 
the whole scheme as fraudulent and rot- 
ten (which it certainly is) and fans 
every day the resentment of the Japan- 
ese people. 

These people have had already too 
many instances of what they deem to 
be dishonest policy of the Western na- 
trons. The Japanese never forget a 



114 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

grievance. They remember perfectly 
well how Japan was cheated out of Port 
Arthur after the Chinese war and they 
have never forgiven the treaty of Ports- 
mouth. Now comes what they think is 
another wrong forced upon them, and 
the clamor of the press finds no lack of 
response. 

At the very worst possible time. 

Add next the fact that all this agita- 
tion is directed against the United 
States, that the Washington adminis- 
tration is held to be solely responsible, 
that the loan is dubbed throughout 
Japan "a dirty Yankee trick," that the 
relations between the countries have 
long been strained, and I should think 
that there was something here that 
might for a moment divert the peace 
society man's attention — even from his 
dinner. 

These fatuous and flabby souls have 
complacently assured us that there is 
no danger of friction between Japan 
and the United States because Presi- 
dent Taft (in the intervals of golf) is 
in favor of peace and we can always be 
sure of the good will of the Japanese 
people. 

So? Well, you ought to read trans- 



INTERESTS WORKING FOR WAR. 115 

lations of the current editorials in some 
Japanese newspaper if you want to get 
a taste of nice, fresh good-will right 
from the spring. 

All this is obvious enough to any man 
that will for a moment lift his eyes 
from his consomme. 

But suppose we get down to the heart 
of the matter, just for once and enjoy 
the rare experience of viewing things as 
they are. 

What on earth are we doing in this 
mess? What interest is it of ours? 
Where did we get in? Manchuria is to 
us just like Easter Island. We have no 
concern in it. It is none of our affair. 
We have no more business to be forcing 
a loan on China than we have to be 
forcing one on Rarotonga. 

How, then, do we come to be of this 
second-story and porch-climbing party? 

We come to be of it because our gov- 
ernment is directed by the Morgan — 
Deutscher Bank — Rothschild combina- 
tion that now directs the affairs of the 
civilized world. 

This combination found that its in- 
terests demanded that a loan be forced 
upon China and a new batch of Chinese 



116 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM 

securities be. issued for use in the in- 
ternational banking business. 

So the partners pulled the strings on 
the governments that each control. The 
Morgan interests issued their orders to 
Washington, the Rothschilds looked 
after France and England and the 
Deutscher Bank (as usual) cared for 
Germany. 

The next thing the world knew these 
four governments had taken China by 
the throat, forced down the loan, ex- 
tracted the securities, practically seized 
Manchuria, and the Japanese people 
were being goaded with a savage resent- 
ment. So here is this sudden and very 
real threat of war projected upon us 
from the only source from which mod- 
ern wars ever arise. That is to say, 
from exploitation and the control of 
government in the interest of capital. 
The Morgan-Rothschild-Deutscher Bank 
combination wants to exploit Manchu- 
ria. So does Japan. The two organized 
greeds come into conflict and the war 
cloud arises. 

Exploitation — and something else. 
The course of China exchange in the last 
two years has been telling a plain story. 
That old-time dumping ground is being 



INTERESTS WORKING FOR WAR. 117 

fenced off, the unconsumed surplus is 
again looming upon the world of finance 
and this loan (announced to be only 
the beginning of a series) is needful to 
keep the machine going. 

So if the dinner eaters and platitude 
specialists want to consider the cause 
of wars, here they have it. Of course, 
they will not consider anything of the 
kind. All they will consider is whether 
the chef has done the canvas-back right 
and how great dividends can be 
squeezed out of the iron workers of the 
Pittsburg district this year. But pos- 
sibly those that are not obsessed may be 
interested in this plain recital of facts, 
because these things mean trouble as 
surely as the world goes around. 

Some eminent gentlemen of the ter- 
rapin school of thought are pleased to 
inform us that there is not the slightest 
danger of war with Japan because en- 
lightened public opinion will prevent 
any such thing. Yes? Well, the vilest 
war in modern times, the most atro- 
cious and indefensible, the war that was 
most clearly a war of aggression and 
rapine, was the war that Great Britain 
forced upon the Boers. Enlightened 
public opinion didn't operate much to 



118 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

prevent that piece of cold-blooded 
piracy, did it? On the contrary, en- 
lightened public opinion (if that means 
word of print) cheered on the pirates 
and urged them with all means in their 
power to kill, maim and burn. And con- 
spicuous among the applauding throng 
of those days was that great advocate 
of peace (between nations), Mr. An- 
drew Carnegie. 

Well, why? Did Mr. Carnegie and 
the rest of the hot-air gentry suddenly 
lose their convictions in favor of peace? 
Not in the least. All the time they were 
defending this war they were firm 
against all other wars. Only this war 
was an exception. This was a just and 
reasonable war. 

How did that come about? Had they 
suddenly gone mad ? 

Not at all — or at least not any mad- 
der than usual. They had been stuffed 
full of lies by a controlled press. The 
real origin and cause of the war had 
been so distorted, lied about and con- 
cealed by the press of the world that 
these unfortunates actually believed the 
dreadful Boers had wantonly attacked 
the sacred throne and the holy empire 
was in danger. 



INTERESTS WORKING FOR WAR. 119 

They believed all that rubbish then. 

They would believe it now. 

Who controls the world's press? The 
same pow 7 ers that control these four 
governments, the same power that dis- 
patches American troops to uphold the 
hands of the tyrant of Mexico, the same 
that involves us in an Oriental compli- 
cation no concern of ours. Then be as- 
sured that this same controlled press 
would be able to lie about and distort 
and juggle with and conceal the actual 
trend of events until a larger part of 
the public would be crying for revenge 
on Japan, and Mr. Carnegie, Lyman 
Abbott and the rest of the menu experts 
would stand by (at a safe distance) 
wildly applauding. 

If you want to stop war, the only way 
is to abolish the cause of war. When- 
ever you find a smug gentleman de- 
nouncing war and yet upholding the 
cause of war, pass him up. He is a fake. 
And whenever you find another gentle- 
man denouncing war and yet drawing 
fat dividends from the industrial battle- 
fields where the slaughters and human 
miseries are far worse than in any war, 
pass him up, also, and do it expeditious- 
ly. He is worse than a fake. 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 

Our text for this morning will be 
found in the familiar words of the Great 
American Troglodyte as follows : 

"I believe in labor unions so long as 
they are peaceable, but I am dead 
against all these acts of violence." 

These are grand words, my brethren, 
and well deserving of our careful atten- 
tion, particularly at this season. 

Our subject naturally divides itself 
into several heads, the first of which is 
this most important question: 

What is an act of violence? 

I think I can best answer this by re- 
lating an incident from contemporane- 
ous history. 

Franklin Furnace, in the state of New 
Jersey, is a town of 1,800 inhabitants. 

It has but one industry, a zinc mine 
operated by the New Jersey Zinc Com- 
pany, which I assume to be part of the 
Zinc Trust. 

The rest of the town lives on and is 
supported by the workers in the mine. 
I mean the grocery stores, butcher shops 
and the like. 

Most of these workers are what are 
known in the community as "damn Po- 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 121 

lacks," being natives of Poland. They 
are of a different tongue from the other 
inhabitants and are therefore, of course, 
contemptible and low persons. 

Some time ago the mining company 
installed a new time-keeping machine to 
check the time of the miners. 

The miners complained that this ma- 
chine cheated them; that it recorded 
wrongly the time when they entered the 
mine and the time when they went out. 
They went to the management about this 
and the management declined to make 
any change in the system. 

Of course. Would you have the mine 
run by a lot of "damn Polacks"? 

The miners thereupon sent for an or- 
ganizer of the American Federation of 
Labor and formed themselves into a 
union for protection — the kind of a 
union spoken of in our text. 

Two days later twenty-one of the men 
prominent in forming the union and in 
proffering the complaint about the time 
machine found themselves discharged. 

The manner of discharging them was 
to notify them when they went to work 
that they were not wanted. No reason 
was given. 



122 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

The union struck against this proced- 
ure. 

Then the business men and better 
classes of Franklin Furnace aroused 
themselves. They perceived at once that 
if this strike went on serious inroads 
would be made upon Sacred Profits. 
Men out of work would not be able to 
buy flour and potatoes and where would 
Business be then? 

Echo answers, Where? And that very 
sadly. 

So they held a meeting and appointed 
a Vigilance Committee to deal with the 
grave situation, the chief means of deal- 
ing being revolvers and clubs. 

The Committee sought out every 
striker and gave him his choice. 

He could go back to work, instantly, 
or leave the town, or be beaten up with 
clubs. 

Some of the strikers seemed inclined 
to question the authority of the Com- 
mittee and actually pretended that damn 
Polacks had some rights that Business 
was bound to respect. On these the gen- 
tlemen with the clubs made a swift and 
salutary impression, convincing them of 
their error. 

Some of the miners hid in their 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 123 

houses. The gentlemen with the clubs 
went after these in gallant style, batter- 
ing down doors and searching bed 
rooms. If women got in the way the 
women were knocked down. 

At one house the wife said her hus- 
band was not at home. The gentlemen 
said she was a liar and pointing their 
revolvers at her told her to shut up or 
they would blow her full of holes. They 
kicked down the bed room door. She 
protested and was promptly knocked 
down. Then they searched the whole 
house, but did not find the woman's hus- 
band. He had fled. 

This woman happened to be in a del- 
icate condition. The treatment she re- 
ceived at the hands of the gentlemen 
brought on premature confinement. She 
gave birth to twins, both dead. For a 
long time she lay in the hospital be- 
tween life and death. 

These Polacks are so inconsiderate! 
But what can you expect of foreigners? 

Most of the men were driven back to 
their work. The places of those that 
eluded the Committee and escaped to 
the woods w T ere taken by fresh impor- 



124 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

tations and the work in the mines was 
resumed. 

Thus were Sacred Profits rescued and 
the security of Business upheld by the 
vigorous citizens of Franklin Furnace. 

You might think that there were acts 
of violence. Not so, my brethren. They 
constituted only necessary precautions 
to preserve Business in its rights. 

H^ ^ ^ 

Or again, to take another illustration. 

Here is a workingman in a factory. 
He belongs to such a union as our text 
supposes. To him that union is a seri- 
ous and sacred thing. He believes that 
it expresses the brotherhood and soli- 
darity of his craft. He and his fellows 
work together; their daily life under 
common trials and adversities produces 
a common feeling of which this union is 
the expression. 

He looks about him and he observes 
that from all sides war is made on that 
union. He sees that his employers are 
constantly striving to destroy it; that 
the courts are organized against it ; that 
the laws are strained and perverted to 
suppress it; that judges attack it with 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 125 

injunctions; that police and militia are 
prepared to trample upon it. 

All this makes it mean the more to 
him. It is his defense in the face of 
hostile society. 

All this time he notices that the cost 
of living is rising upon him, but there 
is no corresponding, increase in his 
wages. Month by month it becomes 
harder for his family to live. More and 
more he and the good wife must scheme 
and pinch and pare to provide for the 
children. 

The union tries to adjust this inequal- 
ity by demanding an increase in wages. 
The demand is refused; the union or- 
ders a strike; this man is out of work. 

He stands by the factory some day 
and sees the man that has taken his 
place and is earning his wage. He 
knows that government is exerting it- 
self to protect this scab. He himself 
was never protected nor benefited by 
government while he was at work. But 
this scab that has taken his place, pla- 
toons of police and companies of sol- 
diers escort to and fro at the public ex- 
pense. He knows, this striker, that he 
must bow in patience and submit to all 
this. He knows that a judge has en- 



12 6 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

joined him against walking in the high- 
way or approaching the factory or talk- 
ing to anyone about the strike or doing 
one overt act against a scab. He knows 
all this ; but there comes across his mind 
the remembrance of his wife and chil- 
dren and their condition, and he stoops 
down and seizes a brick and hurls it at 
that scab. 

That is an act of violence, condemned 
by all right thinking men and particu- 
larly by Troglodytes. 

♦ * * 

The strike is unsuccessful and the 
strikers must leave the town and go 
elsewhere in search of work. Then they 
find that everywhere they are black- 
listed. No factory will employ them be- 
cause they took part in that strike. If 
some of them succeed in getting work 
under assumed names and by making 
false representations, they are quickly 
detected and thrown out. 

Some become tramps, some pick up a 
living by odd jobs and day's labor. The 
families are broken up. The children 
must leave school and go to work. Some 
drift into the streets. Some do worse. 
Some die. 

You might be disposed to think that 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 127 

the blacklist was an act of violence. Not 
in the least. It is a reputable and use- 
ful measure of defense that has been 
endorsed by the Supreme Court of the 
United States. 

What then is an act of violence? 

An act of violence is some act per- 
formed by a workingman in support of 
his union or his cause. 

Let us illustrate further. 

Once I saw Captain John Bonfield of 
the Chicago police leading a detachment 
of his men into a crowd of citizens and 
every policeman wielded a club upon 
every citizen's head that he could reach. 

Those were not acts of violence, but 
laudable performance in support of law 
and order. There was a street car strike 
and the citizens sympathized with the 
strikers because the strikers demanded 
$2 a day and no more than twelve hours 
work. 

On the same day a strike sympathizer 
threw a brick through the window of a 
car driven by a gallant strike-breaker. 
That was an act of violence and at once 
deprived the union of the sympathy of 
every conscientious Troglodyte and Cave 
Dweller. 



128 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Similarly in the street car strike at 

Philadelphia in 1910, when the police 

sent two hundred unoffending citizens 

to the hospitals with broken heads there 

was no violence about their acts. The 

violence came when someone protested 

against the miscellaneous bloodshed. I 

am glad to say this violent person was 

at once arrested. 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

When Mr. Charles W. Morse, the emi- 
nent banker of New York, was on trial 
for breaking the banking laws of the 
nation the clerks and subordinate offi- 
cers of his bank were called as wit- 
nesses. 

They were asked questions concern- 
ing the conduct of the bank, to which 
they gave presumably truthful answers. 

Mr. Morse was convicted. His bank 
was broken up. These clerks and sub- 
ordinate officers were out of employ- 
ment. They expected to obtain work in 
other banks. They found that because 
they had testified to the truth they were 
blacklisted. Not a bank would employ 
them. They remain blacklisted to this 
day. Not one of them has found em- 
ployment in a bank. Some have gone 
into other occupations, some have be- 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 129 

come tramps, some have died of disap- 
pointment and worry. The families of 
many are in the utmost destitution, for 
these men knew nothing except the 
banking business and that became sealed 
to them the moment they revealed their 
employer's methods and law-breaking. 

You might think that this blacklisting 
was an act of violence, but it was not. 
It was only a legitimate means of pro- 
tecting our great banking business from 
the treachery of our servants. You 
might think that an act that prevented 
a man from earning his living was as 
much an act of violence as an act that 
broke his skull. You might think that 
in both instances the results were iden- 
tical. You might think that whether 
you kill a man with a paving stone or 
with starvation, the nature of the act is 
essentially the same. But in all this you 
would be wrong. 

What distinguishes an act of violence 
is the person that commits it. 

H« jH ♦ 

The distinction may at first seem a 
little obscure, but to see clearly the sub- 
ject embodied in our text we must per- 
ceive and realize the subtle difference. 
I will illustrate it further. 



130 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM 

Some years ago a strike occurred on 
the Brooklyn street railroad system. 

At once the gallant militia was called 
out to overawe these miserable strikers 
and drive them back to their work where 
they belonged. There was the gallant 
Seventh Regiment, afterwards so glo- 
riously distinguished by its rapid re- 
treat at the first suggestion of actual 
war, there was the gallant Forty-second 
and the gallant Thirteenth and other 
gallant, gallant men. 

They marched through the streets out 
to the car barns to protect the gallant 
scabs. 

The commander-in-chief of the militia 
issued orders that along their line of 
march no one should appear in the 
streets, nor look out of the windows of 
the houses until the gallant men had 
passed by. 

One citizen peeked between the slats 
of his front bedroom shutters. A gal- 
lant militiaman saw him and laid him 
low with a well-directed shot between 
the eyes. 

Another citizen, that perhaps had 
some foolish notion of a man's rights 
in his own house, climbed to his roof 
and hid behind a chimney. A gallant 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 131 

militiaman saw him there and fired with 
so true an aim that the citizen's body 
tumbled into the street. 

Some persons held these shootings to 
be acts of violence. They were not. 
They were merely justifiable acts in sup- 
port of law, order and the prestige of 
our gallant militia. This should serve 
to make the distinction perfectly clear. 

It is to be regretted that the United 
States District Attorney at New York 
does not seem to be clear-minded about 
this most important matter. He de- 
nounces the blacklisting of the Morse 
witnesses by the united banks. I am 
profoundly grieved to say that he even 
uses violent language about it, and calls 
it an outrage, the poor misguided man. 
Still worse, he has shocked all our sen- 
sibilities by suggesting that bank clerks 
should form a union so that when they 
are made what he calls the victims of 
injustice they can protect themselves 
by going on strike. 

Here is a nice man to be United States 
District Attorney, truly! But alas for 
these degenerate times! It is undeni- 



132 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

able that such men do sometimes get 
into office. 

The press, as was to be expected, 
viewed his suggestion with the proper 
contempt. 

Reporters were sent to interview 
bank clerks to see if any of them looked 
with favor on a course so ridiculous. 

It is gratifying to learn that without 
exception the interviewed men seemed 
to show the right attitude. What ! form 
a union like common, ordinary working- 
men? How absurd! Why, we are not 
workingmen; we are engaged in the 
banking business. We love our kind, 
indulgent employers and have no quar- 
rel with them. They are very good to 
us, indeed, and sometimes when we are 
sick let us have a day off at our own ex- 
pense. We do not believe in labor 
unions, but in bettering our condition 
by studying "self-help." And our kind, 
indulgent employers give us assistance 
and encouragement in these endeavors. 
Oh, dear no — we wouldn't have any use 
for a union. Reggie, let me chew your 
gum for a while. 

So the dastardly project of the Dis- 
trict Attorney falls to the ground and 
the kind, indulgent bankers can be sure 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 133 

of the faithful service of their clerks, 
some of whom get $18 a week with the 
privilege of being blacklisted if they de- 
cline to perjure themselves like gentle- 
men. 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Some persons seem disposed to make 
harsh comments about the Vigilance 
Committee and the aroused business 
men and better classes of Franklin 
Furnace, but to me their conduct exhib- 
its a feature worthy of the highest com- 
mendation. 

They were frank and without subter- 
fuge or pretense went directly for the 
thing they wanted. 

Other men so situated would have ap- 
plied to a judge for an injunction, would 
have brought out the militia, and sum- 
moned those pleasing guardians of our 
public welfare, the Pinkertons. 

All this would have taken time and 
would have been disingenuous. The 
good citizens of Franklin Furnace de- 
termined that for their part they would 
act on the level and avoid deceit. So 
they took the matter into their own 
hands, got their clubs and revolvers and 
in six hours had driven the low, miser- 
able workingmen back to their work. 



134 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Which course is the more consistent 
with the traditions of a great business 
people? I ask you, Which? 
* * * 

Because, as you must know very well, 
whether the employer resorts to the in- 
junction courts or calls out the trusty 
Vigilance Committee with its clubs, the 
substance of the thing is the same. In 
both cases it means that the low com- 
mon workingman must get back to his 
work. 

That is what Judge Richardson meant 
when he declared the strike of the Bos- 
ton Photo-Engravers to be illegal and 
forbade its continuance. That is what 
Judge Goff meant when he enjoined the 
New York Cloakmakers. That is what 
Judge Guy meant when he enjoined the 
Glaziers' Union. That is what every in- 
junction means everywhere and always. 

"Get back to your work, you! That 
is what you were made for. Your func- 
tion in life is to toil, to create wealth 
for others, but to get none of it for your- 
selves. God created you to toil and 
drudge just as He created your masters 
to have riches and enjoy luxury and the 
wealth that you create. Therefore, get 



CONCERNING ACTS OF VIOLENCE. 135 

back to your work, and be quick 
about it." 

I congratulate the good citizens of 
Franklin Furnace on having had the 
courage and candor to come out openly 
in favor of this doctrine. No more 
beating about the bush, no more pre- 
tenses, no more humbug, no more doing 
of the thing behind the cover of court 
injunctions. We mean Get back to your 
work and we may as well say that we 
mean it and act accordingly. 

A disturbing element in our happy 
congregation now arises to inquire if a 
judge's injunction that compels men to 
work under conditions that they do not 
accept is an act of violence. 

It is time that we suppressed these 
rude disturbers. The next thing we 
know some one will be asking if the 
whole sacred wage system is not an act 
of violence, and then some of us will be 
losing our reverence for that magnifi- 
cent institution. 

We will now join in singing "My 
Country Tis of Thee," after which a 
collection will be taken up to send a mis- 
sionary to the heathen of Butaritari. 



A LITTLE THANKSGIVING SERMON. 

Most of the suffering in this world, 
all of the poverty, all of the destitution 
and degradation, all of the lives led in 
darkness and misery, all of the drudg- 
ing and debasing toil, all of the condi- 
tions under which four children in 
every five born into the world are 
doomed from that instant (if they sur- 
vive) to joyless lives, all of the wars 
and race hatreds that imbitter the chil- 
dren of earth and make it a hell instead 
of a heaven, are absolutely unnecessary. 

If then there shall be a just man any- 
where that goes his way and accepts 
without protest all this indescribable 
and overpowering sum of needless pain, 
by what means shall he account *.o him- 
self for his indifference? 

If he acquiesces in these conditions 
he shares the guilt of them. 

From that conclusion there can be no 
escape. If he says to himself that he 
employs no working women at starva- 
tion wages and therefore he is not re- 
sponsible for the fallen women of our 
streets, he is a liar and he knows it. 
All society employs these women and 
all society drives them down to hell so 



A LITTLE THANKSGIVING SERMON. 137 

long as society tolerates the conditions 
under which their employment at star- 
vation wages is inevitable. 

If he says he is not responsible for 
child labor because he owns no factory 
in which children are employed, he is a 
liar. All of us are accessories to the 
murders of these children so long as we 
endure the conditions under which their 
employment is certain. 

If he reads in his morning paper that 
someone has starved in the streets and 
tells himself that it is no concern of his 
because he subscribes to the Charitable 
Organization Society, he is a liar. All 
the Charity Organization Societies in 
the world cannot affect the most mon- 
strous anomaly under which there is 
destitution in a world filled with plenty. 

If he says that he did not make this 
system and therefore is not responsible 
for it, he is a liar. Every man is re- 
sponsible for it that does not daily pro- 
test against it. 

If he says that he has done his duty 
when he has contributed to some cause 
of reform, he is a liar. All the reforms 
between here and the perdition that is 
full of reforms never affected the cause 
of all this boundless misery. 



138 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

If he says that granting all this there 
is for him no part in the work of eman- 
cipation, he is a liar. He has at least 
this part that he should be able to feel 
that he has never for a moment con- 
sented to the degradation of his brother 
and the ruin of his sister. 

If he says that evil will be removed in 
the due process of time and that his 
duty ends with the care of his own 
household, he is a liar. The whole thing 
exists and survives merely because of 
the consent of such men as he. It has 
no other basis. If the just men of the 
world should resolve today that this 
murderous system has long enough 
wrought its infinite evil, that it has cost 
enough lives and shed enough blood and 
that as nothing could possibly be any 
worse the bloodstained thing must cease 
to exist, today would be its last of all 
days and the human race would for the 
iirst time have a chance to be decent and 
to live in the true sense of living. 

If he says that he is opposed to it and 
in favor of dealing justly by the crea- 
tors of the world's wealth, but still with- 
holds his hand because of the bitterness 
or violent words of Socialists, he is but 
playing tricks upon himself. In what 



A LITTLE THANKSGIVING SERMON. 139 

measured terms shall one speak of 
wholesale murder? Or how can any 
terms be excessive in which we de- 
nounce the slavery of the race? Or what 
can be adequate language for the guilt 
of child labor? Or how shall one pro- 
ceed to speak with too much feeling of 
the slum regions of our great cities and 
the lives led therein? 

If he says that he is discharging his 
duty by participating in some move- 
ment of political or municipal genera- 
tion, he is dealing unjustly with his 
own soul. He knows well enough that 
not one item in all this sum of needless 
horrors will ever be changed by any 
such movement. 

If he says, "Am I my brother's keep- 
er ?" he shall find no refuge there; and 
if he says that poverty is divinely or- 
dained and not to be meddled with, he 
shall find no refuge there ; and if he says 
that the poor bring their troubles upon 
themselves, he shall find no refuge there. 
Because he knows well enough in his 
heart that all these sayings are but the 
sickening lies of guilty men, trying to 
find some way of cleansing the blood 
stains from their own hands. 



140 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

What then shall the just man do, and 
what shall he say to himself of his part 
in all these iniquities? If he allows 
them to go on without his protest, he is 
become the active partner of every 
keeper of every bawdy house; he is 
helping to drag more women into the 
burning pit ; he is killing the little chil- 
dren in the factories and mines; he is 
helping to produce the criminals that 
fill the penitentiaries and overcrowd 
the courts. He asquiesces in all these 
things ; they are all absolutely unneces- 
sary; he sustains the system that pro- 
duces them. As he goes to his Thanks- 
giving dinner this week he must have a 
pleasant sensation, supposing him to be 
well-to-do and to know anything about 
this world as it is. There he sits and 
feasts upon plenty, and in the homes 
of the toilers that created his wealth are 
only misery and insufficiency. His chil- 
dren are sleek and well-fed and secure 
of opportunity, and the children of the 
workers that produced for him all he 
has sit about a cheerless board and look 
forward to lives of monotonous drudg- 
ery. 

He gives thanks for his good fortune. 
Suppose when he lifts his head there 



A LITTLE THANKSGIVING SERMON. 141 

should look in at his window a knot of 
people from the slums he has helped to 
spread. It would be a happy feast 
around that man's Thanksgiving table, 
would it not? 

So he says to himself, I am just and 
do not wrong anybody, I try to be de- 
cent so far as I can, I do many good 
works, I am a good citizen, I support 
good causes. Why do these creatures 
come to bother me? 

And the creatures reply, Because you 
and your kind have made us what we 
are and we want you to see on this day 
of feasting the results of your work. 

And he says, When did I drive any 
woman to prostitution, or kill any little 
child, or refuse the birthright of hope 
and joy to any human being? When 
did I take the bread away from you, or 
condemn you to live in garrets, or drive 
your children upon the streets, or dark- 
en your homes, or produce your misery? 

And they say to him, Inasmuch as 
you have consented to the thing that 
produces all this, so is the guilt of it 
laid at your door. 

I think that would make joy and glad- 
ness in that household, would it not? 

But where is the man that could say 



142 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

it were unjustly done? Who could find 
fault with the eternal equity of it? Be- 
cause of the consent of just men this 
thing endures. Upon their heads then 
falls the blood that is shed for it. Feast- 
ing ! Why, surely. Bring to the tables 
of the fortunate the numbers of women 
of the street that were buried last year 
in the potter's field, and an account of 
the six persons that in the city of New 
York starved to death in the midst of 
plenty, and the statistics of increasing 
tuberculosis and pauperism and insan- 
ity, and see what a merry feast they 
shall make in the face of it all ! Let us 
give thanks, said the president and the 
governor in their proclamations. Sure- 
ly. But let us give thanks first of all 
for every sign, however slight, that 
"this daily system of hell in the midst 
of the most enlightened people of the 
earth" is coming to its end. Long 
enough it has darkened the world with 
its shadow. Let us give thanks that it 
is beginning to collapse. 

But for that just man that we imag- 
ined at the beginning sitting upon the 
thrift of this misery and consenting to 
it, upon what terms must he be with 
himself, if ever he endures so much as 
one moment of reflection? 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 

Several gentlemen have been good 
enough to write to me in dissent from 
some remarks in these columns wherein 
I ventured to suggest that it might be 
well to treat colored men with at least 
a degree of justice. One of my corre- 
spondents assures me that he has can- 
celled his subscription to the Coming 
Nation because of those remarks, and 
another, more in sorrow than in anger, 
foretells the speedy ruin of the maga- 
zine and its editors if they persist in ut- 
tering such sentiments. 

That being the case perhaps it would 
be well now to have a few kind words 
together and see if we can come to a 
clear understanding about all these 
things. To obtain sympathy under false 
pretenses is at least as bad as in a like 
manner to obtain money. We may as 
well understand one another and then 
there will be no chance for any suspi- 
cion of intellectual bunco. 

These columns were established for 
the purpose of uttering a weekly pro- 
test against such cases of injustice as 
came currently within the notice of this 
magazine. It is the present intention 



144 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

to pursue that purpose diligently. At 
all times this paper will protest against 
the monstrous economic injustice by 
which men create wealth and do not 
possess the wealth that they create. It 
will also raise its feeble voice against 
any other kind of injustice that comes 
in its way. 

It will not stop to bother with any 
consideration of the so-called race of 
the victim. It will pay just as little at- 
tention to whether he be black, white, 
yellow, brown, red or cream color. They 
all look alike to us. 

I hope that is sufficiently explicit. 
They all look alike to us. 

If there be among the congregation 
those to whom it is necessary to hate 
somebody or those that cannot be happy 
without thinking of their own immense 
superiority to some others of God's chil- 
dren, or those to whom race prejudice 
is an essential of being— well, parting 
is always sad, but perhaps they would 
be happier under another dispensation. 
I would not willingly cause them pain, 
but they are likely to get their feelings 
hurt here and it is best that they should 
clearly understand that in advance. 

The organ will now play a voluntary 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 145 

and the usual collection will be taken up 
while those that conscientiously believe 
in race hatred and cannot live without 
it will have an opportunity to move to- 
wards the door. 

And now for a calm survey of facts 
about all this. 

Race prejudice is the biggest nonsense 
in the world, the most venerable of 
fakes and the most foolish, harmful and 
preposterous. 

In Pennsylvania the other day the 
smoking car of a local train was about 
half full of native gentlemen, when at 
a certain station four Italians were seen 
to be mounting the platform and about 
to enter. 

Instantly the native gentlemen seized 
each two seats, turned them so that 
they faced each other, spread abroad 
their elegant bodies and their ample 
feet until there was left unoccupied not 
a corner of any seat ; and when the Ital- 
ians got in they were obliged to stand 
all the way to their destination. 

After that a man not native to these 
scenes asked one possessed of this ad- 
vantage what might be the meaning of 
the singular spectacle. 

"Why," said the native gentleman, 



146 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

"didn't you see them? They was all dam 
dagoes." 

"Well?" said his questioner. 

"Why, you don't suppose Fd sit next 
to a dam dago, do you?" 

"Don't you ever think that this coun- 
try of yours was discovered by an Ital- 



ian 



?" 



"Aw go awn. Watcher givin' us? 
S'pose you can make me believe George 
Washington was any dago?" 

"Well, omitting discussion of that 
question, would you mind telling me 
why you objected to allowing one of 
those Italians to have a seat in this 
car?" 

"Sure I'll tell you. This is a white 
man's country. There ain't no room 
here for dam dagoes. If they don't like 
what they get here, let 'em stay at home. 
This country's a place for white men ; it 
ain't no place for dam dagoes" — a senti- 
ment that instantly awoke responsive 
applause from all the other native gen- 
tlemen in the car. 

This reminds me of some other scenes 
and observations in my experience. All 
these persons hated the Italians because 
there were many Italians in their neigh- 
borhood, and Italians were not white 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 147 

men ; but it appeared upon examination 
that they professed their willingness to 
preserve amicable relations with other 
foreigners, all unknown to them, that 
they believed to be white men. They 
thought that the Germans, for instance, 
were probably all right; and Swedes, 
they had heard made admirable citi- 
zens; they were white men. But these 
dam dagoes were the limit; no white 
man could be expected to endure them ; 
they were not white men. 

But it happened that I was brought 
up in a community one-half of which 
was German, and I remember that the 
native gentlemen in that community 
held exactly the same opinions about the 
Germans. Other people might be well 
enough, Norwegians, Scotchmen or 
Welshmen ; but these Germans were the 
limit. I even recall that the terms used 
about them were identical with those 
used in Pennsylvania about the Italians, 
they were not white men, and a real 
native gentleman could not be expected 
to get along with anybody that was not 
a white man. 

Just over the river in Moline was a 
large colony of Swedes, and when I went 
to visit in Moline I never failed to be 



148 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

regaled with the enormities of the 
Swedes. It appeared that they were 
likewise "dam foreigners'' and possessed 
of traits that made even the Germans 
seem almost attractive. 

I went to school in a town in North- 
ern New England where there was a 
large settlement of French Canadians, 
and where the native gentlemen used to 
sit around the grocery store every night, 
chewing tobacco and expatiating upon 
the shortcomings of all French Cana- 
dians. It seemed that they also lacked 
lamentably of the white man's essen- 
tials and were all extremely undesir- 
able persons in a white man's country, 
and ought to be made stay at home. 
Subsequently I spent some time in Ce- 
dar Rapids and learned there of the 
enormities of the Bohemians, who 
formed a large part of the city's popu- 
lation. In Hazleton, Pa., I was im- 
pressed (by the native gentlemen) with 
the evil qualities of the Hungarians; 
and in Cleveland, Ohio, gathered that 
the Lithuanians were rank intruders in 
a white man's country. In Wilkesbarre 
the affliction of a Russian colony was 
pointed out to me and in Houston street 
I heard much eloquence about the unat- 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 149 

tractive nature of the Jew. From Eng- 
lish sources I learned that the Irish 
were the lowest people that crawled and 
the Scotch were utterly detestable; 
while I had at all times vivid recollec- 
tions of the old pioneer of my boyhood 
days and the picturesque language in 
which he could convince any listener 
that the Indian was so vile that he ought 
to be shot on sight. 

And yet all the time the fact remained 
and was easily susceptible of proof that 
the German was exactly like the Swede 
and the Hungarian was exactly like the 
German and the Norwegian differed in 
no essential from the Italian, and that 
all were like the American so that in 
the second generation you could by no 
possible means tell one from the other. 

What then was the origin of all this 
gratuitous hatred toward our own 
kind? 

Why, the origin was twofold. In the 
first place it was an echo of old jungle 
days wherein every skin-clad forefather 
of ours snarled at every other skin-clad 
fellow because he feared that there was 
not enough raw meat for both of them. 

In the second place, and a far strong- 
er impulse, it was snobbery pure and 



150 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

simple. The essence of snobbery is that 
I elevate myself by depressing some- 
body else; that the extent of my own 
elevation is the depth to which I can 
pull another man down; that if I can 
successfully feign somebody else to be 
so much worse than I am that he must 
be hated, then I have established myself 
upon a lofty pinnacle indeed. There 
comes to my town a group of foreign- 
ers, strangers, ill at ease in a country 
new to them, and, therefore, without 
adequate defense. The old jungle in- 
stinct bids me snarl at them ; the thirst 
for self-esteem induces me to treat them 
as my inferiors. With the ready assist- 
ance of others in my town that are like 
minded I have no difficulty in getting 
up a sentiment of hatred against these 
"dam dagoes" ; after that the very food 
that they eat and the language of their 
mother land become handy materials 
for my scorn and fertile soil in which 
to grow more hatred. The more for- 
eigners, the more hatred; the more 
hatred, the more I delude myself into 
the belief that I am showing my superi- 
ority. 

All of which is mere snobbery run 
mad. 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 151 

Add to this the terrible results of a 
terrible war, the awful crop of linger- 
ing passions that such a war always 
has, and the inevitable position of the 
negroes as the visible cause of that war, 
and this is the exact situation in the 
South and the reason why so many 
white people there are poisoning their 
own lives by hatred of their colored 
neighbors. 

I admit that it is a situation easily 
explained and not unnatural, under the 
circumstances. But I don't see why I 
should be expected to help it along. 

Anyway, I have no idea of doing so. 
I have heard Prof. Wilder of Cornell, 
demonstrating on two or three hundred 
human brains, show that there was no 
possible difference among them, wheth- 
er the skins of their former owners 
were black, white or yellow. Other 
scientists have shown that the blood 
that flows through all the veins of all 
the world is one and indistinguishable. 
It is proposed then that because of some 
difference in the color of the skin or the 
curliness of the hair I should go to 
hating somebody. I think I shall have 
to be excused. 



152 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

Robert G. Ingersoll, philosopher and 
prophet, said to me once: 

"Mr. A thinks that Mr. B is a very 
strange man ; he cannot understand how 
Mr. A can be so strange. He forgets 
that to exactly the same degree that Mr. 
B seems strange to him he must seem 
strange to Mr. B, and that the view of 
each of them about the other must nec- 
essarily be of exactly the same weight 
and importance." 

I think that is about the size of it. 
A provincial American sees a party of 
Italian immigrants just landed at the 
Battery. They seem very strange to 
him ; strange and comical. It never oc- 
curs to him that by the same token he 
must seem just as strange and just as 
comical to them; yet such is the fact. 
If he were to be suddenly landed in Apu- 
lia he would appear just as aw T kward 
and ill at ease as the newly landed Ital- 
ians appear in Broadway. But in Apu- 
lia nobody would laugh at him, nor try 
to make him unhappy in his novel sur- 
roundings ; because the people there are 
naturally too kind and too decent. I 
don't know whether knowledge of that 
fact would restrain the American hood- 
lum or not ; probably not. 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 153 

But there are places in the world 
where the tables would be neatly turned 
upon him if he should venture into 
them. 

Doubtless it is great fun to chase a 
Chinaman down the street with rocks; 
a Chinaman is not a white man and is 
entitled to no rights. But it is not near- 
ly so funny when you are about the only 
white person in the heart of a great 
Chinese city and all around you are hos- 
tile faces and hands ready to throw 
stones at you. It gives the case a differ- 
ent aspect, and would, I think, tend to 
revise the idea of humor now enjoyed 
by some hoodlum gentlemen of my ac- 
quaintance. It tends also to the sudden 
enlargement of the views about the rea- 
sonableness of race hatred when you 
find that your own race is in a small 
minority and (for good and sufficient 
reasons) hated to the death. Wonder- 
ful how the aspect of things changes at 
such a time ! I could wish that it might 
be a commoner experience for the sake 
of the educational values. I can assure 
you they are rapid as well as radical. 

A distinguished French scientist has 
lately published to the world the results 
of years of investigation of racial dis- 



154 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

tinctions and differences among men. 
He finds that there is none. There is 
no such thing as a racial type; there is 
no such thing as a race. All the people 
of the earth are members of one family 
together, he finds; not sentimentally 
but as a matter of cold scientific fact. 

Well, those that have seen man in 
many places and under many conditions 
need no scientist to come from the Sor- 
borme to tell them that. It is a fact 
demonstrated by their invariable expe- 
rience, if that has been at all wide- 
spread. 

The difference between what is called 
one race and any other is as important 
as the fact that in Nassau men give 
the letter G the soft sound and in Hann- 
over the hard. 

That being the case, when I am in- 
vited by some of my esteemed corre- 
spondents to join them in hating the 
colored man, I can't see my way to ac- 
cept their kind invitation. After many 
years of close and careful observation 
of my colored brother I don't see any- 
thing about him to hate nor any traits 
that are essentially different from my 
own. If he is to be hated for those 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 155 

traits, so am I; and I don't think I 
should like that. 

Moreover, if there is anything that 
life has taught me it is that the hatred 
of any human being upon any ground 
whatsoever does not pa>. I have no 
moral sermon to utter about it, but just 
as a practical proposition it doesn't pay. 
There is nothing in it for anyone but 
pain and loss, disaster and decline. It 
costs too much. Nobody can afford to 
indulge in it. It eats out all the joy of 
living; it hardens the heart to every- 
thing that is worth while; it turns life 
to bitterness; it exacts too much of a 
penalty. It isn't worth while. 

The whole South is now engaged in 
hating colored men. I don't see any- 
thing in it. It is just as unprofitable to 
hate colored men as it is to hate men of 
any other color. It does not seem to be 
the intention of the Creator that we 
should hate anybody. It seems to have 
been His intention that we should love 
instead of hate, because love pays and 
hate does not. v . 

Moreover, I was never able to dis- 
cover any reason anywhere to think that 
because at one time some of my breth- 
ren dwelt in a climate where the inten- 



156 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM 

sity of the light produced dark skins as 
a necessary protection to life, that, 
therefore, I am justified in excluding 
those brethren from the universal broth- 
erhood. And still less am I justified in 
hating them. We undertook at the be- 
ginning of this discourse to have a frank 
understanding. Well, here it is. A ne- 
gro in my deliberate judgment is just 
like a white man, entitled to exactly the 
same rights and the same treatment — 
always, everywhere and under all condi- 
tions. 

And that is exactly what he is going 
to get from this pulpit, because he is 
just as much a brother of mine as is 
anybody else. 

But if these gentlemen feel that they 
cannot get along without hating, I can 
tell them something to hate that will be 
worth while. 

Let them hate the system that made 
of the negro a slave, and denied to him 
opportunity and a chance to live, that 
still fills the hearts of many men with 
hatred against him, that still denies him 
education and equality — hate that. 

Hate the system that all over the 
world inflames the hearts of men against 
one another, fills the world with hatred 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 157 

instead of love and darkness instead of 
light — hate that. 

Hate the system that robs every 
worker of four-fifths of his toil; that 
enables parasites to live upon his labor ; 
that makes him as truly a slave today 
as ever the unfortunate African was; 
that produces war, crime, insanity and 
epidemics; that is responsible for the 
slum and all the curses that flow from 
it; that is responsible for the infinite 
murders and abominations of child la- 
bor; that goes through the world drip- 
ping with blood — hate that. 

Hate the system that is everywhere 
the foe of democracy, peace and good- 
will among men; that limits education, 
knowledge and culture to one little 
group of the fortunate; that thrives 
best where the slum is rankest; that 
corrupts government, overturns liberty, 
controls courts, rots politics, and breeds 
everywhere one vast cloud of misery 
and wrong — hate that. 

Hate the system that produces pau- 
pers and millionaires; that surfeits a 
few with idiotic luxury and deadens the 
many with drudging toil — hate that. 

Hate the system that in a world full 
of abundance reduces three-quarters of 



158 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

the inhabitants to insufficiency and prac- 
tical destitution- — hate that. 

Hate a system that drives men into 
prison and women into prostitution- 
hate that. 

If they will discover a way by which 
they can sufficiently and adequately hate 
this monstrous and diabolical thing that 
darkens the world and tears at millions 
of hearts, they will find that they will 
have no time to hate any human being 
— not even the negro, most conspicuous 
of all the victims of this unspeakable 
iniquity. 

And they will find that this kind of 
hatred, alone of all hatred, pays the 
man that possesses it. I think they will 
find that just in proportion that a man 
hates this abominable and frightful 
thing, the enemy of the race, just in 
that proportion he loves his fellow man 
and gets from life the true richness of 
living. 

All of which is probably a poor way 
of carrying elections and getting into 
office. But I can tell you something that 
is of infinitely greater importance than 
carrying any election in this world or 
electing anybody to any office. 

It is that some of this hatred of men 



ABOUT RACE PREJUDICE. 159 

should come to an end ; that there should 
no longer be on this earth any men that 
because of the accident of birth are de- 
nied of a single right possessed by any 
other men ; that all the children of earth 
should have an equal opportunity to en- 
joy the life thereon that might be so 
beautiful and is so .clouded with hate 
and fear. 

Or if we shall not see this in our time, 
at least that none of us, my brethren, 
should bear any part of the blame for 
these horrors by acquiescing for one 
moment in any of them. 

Here endeth the first lesson. 

P. S. — By way of benediction. In this 
world we live to learn. One of the gen- 
tlemen that have addressed me in favor 
of hating somebody declares over his 
signature that he is a Socialist. 

Here is a new kind of Socialism. 



THE ITALIAN. 

For my part I have heard enough of 
this cheap talk about Superior and In- 
ferior Races and can do very nicely (as 
they say in England) if I never get any 
more. 

The most superior race in the world, 
supposing there to' be any such thing, 
has so little to boast of and so much to 
do to clean up its front yard that it had 
better attend to its work in hand and 
forget any temptation to indiscriminate 
yawp. 

In the Twentieth Century, among the 
nations composed of these famous and 
yawpy "superior races" we still have 
kings, hereditary legislators, nobles, 
dukes, titled vermin of many kinds, 
state churches, militarism gone mad, 
imprisonment for debt, Use majeste in 
one form or another, and a few trifles of 
that kind calculated to silence the cele- 
brating ardor of youthful minds that 
imagine a parliament in session to be 
the ultimate goal of human progress. 

We also have in all countries man- 
aged by whatsoever of these superior 
races, slums, poverty, destitution, huge 
machines to make idiots, huge machines 



THE ITALIAN. 161 

to make criminals, vast, ingenious ar- 
rangements to produce disease and re- 
duce the surplus population by means 
more effective than war. 

We also have conditions under which 
the overwhelming majority of the pop- 
ulation must live in insufficiency and 
want, in a pit of misery from which 
there is no escape. 

We have conditions under which it is 
impossible for more than one child in 
twenty to receive anything like an ade- 
quate education or have any opportun- 
ity in the beautiful world that we in- 
herit. 

We have all government organized 
to maintain these conditions, all courts 
operated to prevent any escape there- 
from, all the forces of society at work 
supporting it and lying about it. 

If under the most superior of the su- 
perior races things are so badly man- 
aged that sufficiency and opportunity 
are the exclusive possessions of fifteen 
per cent of the inhabitants of a world 
overflowing with abundance, I should 
like to know what an inferior race 
would do with the same problems. 

Also I should gladly know what about 
all this is so gaudy with achievement as 



162 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

to give any member of any so-called race 
the right to look down upon any other. 
"Go and get a reputation I" says the 
champion pugilist to the unknown fight- 
er. "Go and do something/' would be 
a good comment to any of these gentle- 
men convinced that they belonged to a 
race superior to any other. 

sfc % ^ 

As a matter of fact, there is no such 
thing as a superior race. All races are 
essentially alike, admitting that there is 
any such thing as a race. In some parts 
of the world because of fortuitous cir- 
cumstance, some of us have advanced 
a microscopic distance beyond some 
others less fortunate. But a reversal of 
conditions would have produced a re- 
versal of results ; and anyway there is 
no group nor tribe of the whole family 
that is out of hailing distance of the 
jungle. 

You only have to look at the slum re- 
gion in any city to see that. 

5jC %L $ 

And another thing, while we are on 
this subject, I have heard enough of 
that word "dago" applied in a deroga- 
tory sense to a person born in Italy. c 



THE ITALIAN. 163 

Here is a very good example, one of 
the finest in the whole world, of this 
idiotic and boneheaded thing called 
race prejudice. Let's take a good look 
at it as exhibited in the case of the anti- 
Italian feeling that runs riot in some 
parts of this country. 

Superior Saxon, talking in this large, 
vague way about the undesirable nature 
of the Italian immigrant, are you aware 
that what we call Western civilization 
is nothing in the world but the Roman 
Empire? 

Do you ever reflect that all the cul- 
ture we have we drew from the shores 
of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic ? 

Do you know that we are indebted to 
Italy for the foundation of all we have 
in government, law, organized society, 
art, literature, and every influence that 
makes life decent and above savagery? 

Do you know that we are all Italians 
so far as we have in us any of the re- 
sults of education, knowledge, restraint 
and the accumulated wisdom of the 
world? 

Do you ever reflect that Rome was 
never really conquered by the barbari- 
ans, but conquered them, overcoming 
them with its civilization and spreading 



164 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM 

through them to the darkest corners of 
Europe the light of such culture as we 
have? 

Do you ever stop to think that if there 
had been no such thing as the spirit of 
Italy we might all be barbarians this 
day? 

When your ancestors and mine were 
skin-clad savages running about in the 
woods, killing with a club something 
for breakfast, Italy was writing im- 
mortal books and laying such founda- 
tions for the education of the race as 
can never be overthrown. 

When your ancestors and mine be- 
lieved implicitly that a dirty rag of a 
man that called himself a king was a 
deity with the just power of life and 
death over his subjects, Italy was 
founding republics and discovering the 
principle of universal suffrage. 

When the people of England lived in 
filthy styes and had neither art, litera- 
ture, decency nor ideas of progress, 
Dante was writing one of the world's 
eternal monuments of literature and a 
thousand schools in Italy nourished 
learning for the rest of the world. 

For all the modern world, she was 
the mother of every art. We owe to her 



THE ITALIAN. 165 

music, painting, architecture and sculp- 
ture, poetry and the drama. 

She even taught us to cook. 

In the face of this record, the de- 
scendants of a nation of greasy hut- 
dwellers that for centuries never did a 
thing except eat raw meat and carve 
one another, look rather ill talking in 
an awesome manner about the inferior 
Italian race. 

We can even go farther. 

What is it that the English-speaking 
people most brag about when contem- 
plating their vast superiority to the 
lowly Latin? ■ 

Why, it is what we are pleased to call 
our achievements for human liberty and 
free government. 

When I was a school boy they used 
to drill that into me. The English Rev- 
olution of 1688 was supposed to be the 
grandest event that ever happened; all 
progress took its date from 1688. 

The American Revolution, supple- 
menting this, shed glory far around and 
proved that when it comes to struggles 
for liberty the English speakers are the 
only genuine. All others are imita- 
tions. 



166 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Yes. Well, there is not a page in 
the history of the English-speaking peo- 
ple fit to compare for a moment with 
the most obscure record of the Italian 
Revolution. We think we have made 
sacrifices for liberty, do we not? The 
truth is we are not fit to be torch- 
bearers to the Italians. All that we 
have ever done put together is childish 
compared with the unequaled story of 
that tremendous struggle that ended 
with a United Italy. Those long years 
of dogged, ceaseless, unswerving strug- 
gle, defeated and never turning back, 
betrayed in the hour of hard-won vic- 
tory, fooled by the Pope, tricked by Na- 
poleon the Little, the soldiers of free- 
dom horribly persecuted, hanged, im- 
prisoned, tortured, subjected to the 
fiendish malice of that unutterable mon- 
ster, Ferdinand the Second, and all this 
consuming not years alone but more 
than a generation; and yet there was 
no turning back, and no thought of giv- 
ing up, but only persistent, ceaseless 
fighting. Where can you match such a 
record ? 

Where among the annals of mankind 
is a figure fit to stand by the side of 
Mazzini ? 



THE ITALIAN. 167 

We make overwrought heroes of 
Hampden and Cromwell, Sydney and 
Gladstone. They are but pigmies all 
compared with this wonderful man. 
With the single exception of Wendell 
Phillips, the English speakers have 
never produced one man deserving to 
be classed with him. The poorest 
Italian village has its memorial of Maz- 
zini. In America the name of Phillips 
is already obliterated. Are we really 
so superior? 

As Phillips himself said, a fair test 
of the ideals and aspirations of a na- 
tion is had from the monuments it 
erects. You go about the city of Wash- 
ington and are edified with the sight of 
monument after monument to military 
heroes. Where did this man fight? I 
forget. What was this man's contri- 
bution to the human cause? There is 
something about him in the school his- 
tory, but I don't remember what it is. 
They are all very brave in uniform, 
with swords and pistols and things. 
What did they do ? Well, nobody knows, 
exactly, but they were great fighters. 
Where are the monuments to the men 
that led in ideas of freedom and prog- 
ress? I haven't seen any of these in 



168 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

my own wanderings about the capital 
of my native land, but wherever they 
are I will engage to find for each one 
of them one hundred memorials in Italy 
to the name of Joseph Mazzini, intellec- 
tual friend and liberator of mankind, 
head and soul of the Italian Revolution, 
lifelong, unselfish, pure and steadfast 

Soldier of the Common Good. 
* * * 

In Milan you will find a beautiful 
white marble monument to a lawyer 
that devoted his life to agitating for the 
abolition of capital punishment. 

We have not yet found time to erect 
any memorials to our men in civil life 
that have interested themselves in be- 
half of humanity, but in every state in 
the Union except three we still hang 
men or put them to death in the elec- 
tric chair. Italy has been for forty- 
four years free from the barbarism of 
legal murder. I should think that Eng- 
lishmen or Americans pausing over our 
hangmen's records would be moved to 
go a little slow about the inferior 
Italian. 

And yet they are not. I was crossing 
the Atlantic a couple of years ago on a 
steamer from the Mediterranean that 



THE ITALIAN. 169 

carried many Italian immigrants. These 
disported themselves on the forecastle 
and it was a common practice for the 
first-class passengers to assemble for- 
ward and lament the addition of "such 
people" to the superior population of 
the United States. 

Instead of lamenting they should 
have rejoiced. 

Perhaps if we can get enough Italians 
to come here they may civilize us to a 
point where we shall not desire to hang 
anybody. 

These "such people" have other qual- 
ities for us — among them the sense of 
workingmen's solidarity, a willingness 
to make sacrifice for the common aim, 
and a persistence that never tires. 

An Italian strike is known as one of 
the hardest of all strikes to subdue. 

Not long ago the management of a 
great branch of one of the most impor- 
tant trusts in America was engaged in 
the pleasant and congenial task of re- 
ducing wages. 

It reduced wages everywhere until it 
came to a department wherein all the 
employes were Italian. No wages were 
reduced in that department. The man- 



170 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

agement was asked why, and frankly 
gave the reason. It knew that the 
American employes would stand for a 
cut, but the Italians would not, and if 
one of them quit all would quit. 

I should think that a few more men 
of that kind would be quite an addition 
to our outfit. 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 

This being the merry holiday season, 
and all that, suppose this morning we 
betake ourselves to the question 
whether in this life of ours we have 
any duties toward one another or 
whether we are a gang of individual 
pigs with nothing to do but to get to 
the trough early and stay there late. 

Today I have been looking over the 
illiteracy statistics for the United 
States. They are an instructive if not 
an exhilarating study. 

It appears that in this proud country 
of ours more than 44 per cent of the 
negro population is illiterate, which is 
one of the highest percentages in the 
world. 

Practically all of these benighted 
minds are in the Southern states, and 
their condition results from the fact 
that those states will not take any in- 
terest in negro education and without 
exception appropriate insufficient 
amounts for the negro schools. 

The situation is, in fact, far worse 
than appears in the statistics, where, 
God knows, it is bad enough. 

These states maintain savage and 



172 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

barbarous laws, the relics of the dark 
days of chattel slavery, forbidding 
white persons to teach in colored 
schools. As there are not enough col- 
ored teachers to supply the demand, the 
result is that in many places the 
colored schools are closed all the time 
and the colored children grow up with- 
out a vestige of education. 

In some of these states before the 
war it was a crime for any person to 
teach a negro slave to read. That ex- 
pressed the idea that still prevails there. 
Before the war the slave-owners didn't 
want the slave to have any education 
lest they should learn enough to run 
away. Now these states do not want 
the negroes to have any education lest 
they should learn to assert their rights. 

These are the facts about the mat- 
ter; no good can possibly come of de- 
ceiving ourselves about them. In the 
North the well-fed, complacent, typical 
American, if he can be brought to look 
at these matters even for a moment, 
says, "Oh, leave it to the South; the 
South knows what to do about the 
negro," and goes on his way intent upon 
making another dollar. 

So we leave it to the South, and the 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 173 

South denies education to the negro, 
and when he does a deed of darkness 
or ignorance burns him alive and gives 
thanks for "a white civilization." 

Now, I know that this is not popular 
talk and is not supposed to be well ad- 
vised for the great movement of which 
I am a humble supporter; but for once 
I am going to have my say about it, 
elections or no elections, Mississippi or 
elsewhere; and the thing that is most 
on my chest is this monstrous injustice 
of providing the conditions that make 
evil inevitable and then lynching the 
victims of the condition that we our- 
selves create. So long as that is the 
case I should think that the hugest jest 
in the world is the idea of sending 
American missionaries to Burma or 
Rarotonga. We ought to petition 
Burma and Rarotonga to send mission- 
aries to us. 

In the last twenty-five years 2,458 
colored men have been lynched in this 
country and in only a minority of the 
cases has there been any allegation of 
the crime that is viewed as offering the 
sole excuse for this monstrous lawless- 
ness. 

I should think this fact alone would 



174 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

give a missionary from Rarotonga rea- 
son to believe that he had enough to do 
in the United States. 

And I am not much edified to hear 
Northern people deploring these condi- 
tions in the South. I don't see that the 
North has any right to cast stones at 
the South when we come to this matter. 
How is it up here? Except at Coates- 
ville, Springfield and a few other bar- 
barous communities we do not burn 
negroes alive, but we seem to have en- 
tered into a league to prevent them 
from earning a living if we can. What 
are all these colored boys and young 
men going to do when they start out to 
earn their bread? Ever think of that? 

Twenty-five years ago, in the city of 
Chicago, all the waiters in the hotels 
and restaurants and the barbers in 
most of the barber shops were colored 
men. In many lines of employment 
colored men worked upon equal terms 
with white men. 

A young colored man in those days 
had some reasonable chance of honest 
work. Today he has open to him a 
choice among the following careers : 

If he has luck, influence or adroitness 
in elbowing some other man out of his 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 175 

job he may become a porter on a Pull- 
man car. Under similar conditions he 
may get a berth as a waiter on a rail- 
road dining car. He may obtain some- 
thing to do in the worst paid lines of 
manual labor, such as cleaning spit- 
toons or sweeping out stores. He may 
find occasional employment as a hostler 
or scab teamster. He may make a pre- 
carious livelihood among his own pov- 
erty-stricken people. Or he may turn 
strike-breaker and professional crim- 
inal. 

Practically all the hotels and restau- 
rants now have white waiters exclu- 
sively. It is "so much better form." 
There are no barber shops with colored 
barbers except those operated solely for 
colored customers. Nearly all lines of 
industry are closed to a man that has a 
dark skin. What is he going to do? 
Starve, for all w T e care. He has com- 
mitted the unpardonable social crime. 
His skin is dark. Our skins are light. 
Why doesn't he have a light skin like 
ours? Then he might be allowed to 
work and live like other men. But so 
long as his skin is dark let him go hang. 

I had a case seven or eight years ago 
of a young colored man that had been 



176 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

valedictorian of his class at the New- 
ark, Ohio, High School. The honor was 
won by competition in scholarship and 
this colored boy got it on merit. Snob- 
bery in Newark rose up with a mighty 
shriek and the School Board was be- 
sieged to make an exception and rule 
out the winner because his sk'in was 
dark. For some reason it declined to 
commit this act of obvious perfidy and 
the name of the colored boy still led his 
class. An attempt was next made to 
frighten the winner to a point where 
he would decline the honor. The boy 
stood manfully for his rights. Finally 
there was nothing to be done but to 
submit to the horrible outrage, and 
allow a colored boy to pronounce a vale- 
dictory in "a white man's country," al- 
though some of the parents refused to 
allow their children to attend the grad- 
uating exercises of a school in which 
they had been distanced by a member 
of "the inferior race." 

The valedictorian now went to work 
in the branch office of a great New 
York life insurance company at Cleve- 
land, if I remember correctly. He was 
a first-class accountant, quick and ac- 
curate, and the manager, happening to 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 177 

be a man with a mind broader than a 
needle's point, entirely overlooked that 
damning fact about his color for the 
sake of the work he did. He was in 
that office about five years, in which 
time there was no complaint about him 
except from snobbish persons that ob- 
jected to seeing a colored man at work 
in "a white man's country/' He was 
promoted from time to time and the 
manager came to look upon him as an 
invaluable asset and so reported to the 
New York office. 

The time came when the cashier at 
Cleveland was advanced to a higher po- 
sition and his place became vacant. The 
manager gave it to the young colored 
man as the person on the premises best 
fitted to fill it. He so reported to New 
York. Some time after, in writing to 
the main office, he took occasion to 
praise highly the work done by the 
new cashier and to remark that in this 
case certainly the common prejudice 
against colored men was without foun- 
dation. 

At once came back a horrified protest 
from the management. "We never un- 
derstood that this man was colored," it 
said. "We cannot have colored men em- 



178 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

ployed in our offices. Please dismiss 
this man at once." 

So he was dismissed, and after spend- 
ing a year in Tiunting for another 
position and being pointed to the door 
because his skin was dark he finally suc- 
ceeded in getting occasional employ- 
ment as a porter. 

If he had taken to crime, we, in our 
great wisdom, would have used him as 
an illustration of the bad character of 
the negro race. 

Because that is the way we do. We 
provide conditions under which it is im- 
possible for a man to be honest and then 
we express the greatest wonder and in- 
dignation because anybody goes wrong. 

But about this negro question, what 
are you going to do about it ? 

We have given rein to race hatred to 
such an extent that we no longer allow 
the dark-skinned men to earn their liv- 
ing. We will not let them work at any- 
thing; we will not allow them the or- 
dinary rights of human beings. We fly 
into a rage if anybody suggests that 
they have legal rights not different in 
any way from our own. We have dis- 
franchised them in the South by 
trampling upon and nullifying that 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 179 

blessed Constitution that is the sup- 
posed bulwark of the nation. We have 
reduced them to the legal status of 
helots. Now we refuse them a chance 
to earn their daily bread. Well, then, 
what do you want to do with them? 
Lynch them all? Or what? 

Upon this point I desire very much 
to have light. I am perfectly familiar 
with all the bad qualities of the negro 
as eloquently described by the descend- 
ants of the men that used to hold negro 
slaves. I have heard all there is to be 
said on that subject and heard it many 
times repeated. Nothing that I can see 
is to be gained by longer sitting about 
the corner grocery and cursing the 
black man. I get no enlightenment 
from that. What I want to know is 
what we are going to do about it? 

Some of us that are perfectly willing 
to continue the present factory-town 
conditions are also content to let the 
race question go, assuring the rest that 
it will work out all right in the end, 
though what end, God knows. 

It may suit these persons to tolerate 
any condition so long as nothing inter- 
feres with their profits, but men cf just 
minds and some faith in democracy will 



180 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

never be so easily satisfied. Such men 
will never understand that the sacred 
right to life and justice can be affected 
in the slightest degree by the amount 
of coloring pigment under any man's 
skin, and will never be content with a 
condition that makes the very name of 
the Republic a lie and a sign of shame. 

Some of the easy-going souls tell us 
that the solution of the problem will 
come when the negro shall have accu- 
mulated property and become in capi- 
talistic eyes "respectable." These say, 
"Let the negro practice thrift and buy 
property. Then he can claim his rights 
as a human being." 

Yes. Well, on December 5 the Asso- 
ciated Press sent out news of an inci- 
dent reported to have occurred in Ten- 
nessee that seems to throw some valu- 
able light upon this argument. 

According to this account, a negro 
family had been inspired with the gor- 
geous promises of thrift to a point 
where it had saved enough money to 
buy a farm. Then the white gentlemen 
in the neighborhood had decided that 
they did not want any "niggers" own- 
ing farms thereabout, and to express 
their disapproval of such intrusions 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 1S1 

from the helot class they lay in wait 
for three members of this thrifty fam- 
ily, who were taking a load of cotton to 
the market. The white gentlemen tied 
the three to their load of cotton, set fire 
to it and burned the three to death. 
One of them was a little girl. 

I should think that a few events of 
this kind might encourage negroes to 
practice thrift and own property and 
become respectable. To be sure, the 
burning of the little girl seems exces- 
sive zeal. It could hardly be true that 
she had offended anyone by owning any- 
thing. But we are to remember that 
she might grow up to own something. 
The guardians of "a white civilization" 
cannot be too particular about such 
things. 

But while I am willing to admit that 
so far as this incident indicated a solu- 
tion of the problem the solution might 
be deemed effective, what I want to 
know is whether we are ready as a na- 
tion to accept it. I am tired, for my 
part, of beating about the bush and pre- 
tending one thing and practicing an- 
other. If the idea is to go out and mur- 
der all the negroes, let's say so frankly 
and be done with it. And if the idea is 



182 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

to restore them to the chattel slavery 
from which they were with so much 
difficulty set free, let's say that. And 
if we don't believe in democracy, nor 
decency, nor justice, nor righteousness, 
let's say that. But whatever we do, 
let's quit playing the sneaking, odorous 
hypocrite about it. For once in the his- 
tory of the American people let's say 
just what we are and what we stand 
for. And if we deliberately purpose to 
become slave-hunters and men-owners 
for the sake of holy profits, let us ad- 
mit that intention, put on a feather 
headdress, seize our tomahawks and in 
other respects turn Apache. 

You see, as a matter of fact, the 
thing will not work. It is either one or 
the other; either every human being is 
equally a child of mother earth and 
equally entitled to his life and a chance 
to live it, or there are no rights for any 
of us. Either there can be no valid ob- 
jection to a man's rights on the basis 
of the color of his skin, or there are 
valid objections to his rights on any 
ground that may suit the caprice or the 
interest of the class in power. With 
entirely too much indifference the 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 183 

workingmen of the North have toler- 
ated the disfranchisement of the negro 
of the South. If the negro can be dis- 
franchised to suit the purpose of the 
dominant class, so also may be the 
workingman. If the Northern work- 
ingman could know at this moment how 
much discussion is going on in our "best 
circles'' about the desirability of limit- 
ing the franchise with qualifications of 
property and education he might begin 
to perceive how truly the cause of the 
disfranchised negro is the cause of all 
labor everywhere. 

The fact is that there are no real 
divisions into races. The genuine di- 
visions of today are into classes, not . 
races. The interests of all men that / 
work are identical, no matter what ma/ 
be the color of their skin, no matter 
where they may reside, no matter what 
may be their mother tongue. All other 
divisions are artificial and are now be- 
come mere fakes that the masters of 
the world use to delude workingmen 
into silence that there may be no loosen- 
ing of the toilers' chains. Class distinc- 
tions alone are of the slightest impor- 
tance or reality. One class, comprising 
the vast majority of mankind, is en- 



184 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

gaged in creating the world's wealth. 
Another class, comprising a small mi- 
nority, is engaged in enjoying the 
wealth created by the majority. No 
other distinctions are worth a moment's 
thought. At present, all the men that 
are engaged in creating the world's 
wealth, whether they be white, black, 
yellow, brown, red or fawn color, all of 
them, are ruled and preyed upon by the 
minority that create nothing. The rea- 
son they are thus preyed upon and de- 
frauded is primarily because they are 
divided by artificial distinctions into 
groups of races or organizations wholly 
absorbed in opposing one another in- 
stead of opposing the common enemy. 
The first duty is to unite upon the basis 
of a common cause and toward such a 
union of all men that toil, here is the 
most obvious step. 

* * * 

Having prevented negroes from ob- 
taining education, the South proceeds 
to denounce the negro as ignorant and 
shiftless and is vastly indignant be- 
cause he does things that befit the state 
of ignorance that the community de- 
crees for him. 

This seems to the impartial observer 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 185 

an infinite wrong. But I don't see that 
the South has any monopoly of it. Our 
custom all about the country is to pro- 
vide for most children conditions under 
which reasonable and successful life is 
impossible, and then to blame the fail- 
ures that we have insured; to sow the 
seeds of evil and then denounce the 
harvest. 

It is the same way about crime. We 
build the slums and condemn millions 
of children to be brought up in them, 
and when the inevitable criminal 
emerges from the hothouse that we 
have made for his cultivation we turn 
around and thrust him into jail. The 
work is ours, so we punish him. If all 
tales are true and there is a judgment 
seat of infinite and perfect justice I 
should think our communal sins must 
show up pretty black there. Making 
criminals and punishing them; breed- 
ing tuberculosis and making a hypocrit- 
ical roar about it; creating imbeciles 
and thrusting them out of sight ; hand- 
ing out doles of charity and refusing to 
get off the backs of the people we op- 
press ; living on the labor of others and 
uttering the most genial platitudes 
about the unfortunates ; building 



18 6 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

churches and robbing men; providing 
Christmas dinners for the poor, but be- 
ing very careful to see that they remain 
poor; singing "Suffer little children to 
come unto me," and declaring dividends 
from the labor that slays them; sub- 
scribing to Sunday schools and defeat- 
ing anti-child labor laws ; sending mag- 
dalenes to the island and blinding our 
eyes to the conditions that make them 
what they are; praising peace and 
causing wars; condemning organized 
labor for its "violence" and never 
querying as to the causes of labor's vio- 
lent thoughts; prating about "pros- 
perity" and ignoring the fact that 85 
per cent of the population is poor; 
singing Christmas carols over a hell of 
pain and misery; emitting streams of 
sickly platitudes about republican insti- 
tutions that are already destroyed ; pre- 
tending, faking, lying, smirking, duck- 
ing, dodging, and at all times wallow- 
ing; where is the chance for glorifica- 
tion in all this? 

Merry Christmas. Sure. In a coun- 
try where the poor steadily increase in 
proportionate number and steadily de- 
cline in economic condition, where the 
army of the unemployed grows daily 



THE RACE QUESTION AGAIN. 1ST 

and 8,000,000 citizens are deprived of 
the constitutional rights because of 
their complexions, what should we do 
but be merry? Draw up closer here to 
the fire. We have enough, we are warm, 
we are comfortable. What do we care? 
We have our jaws and both front feet 
in the trough. What do we care? 
Is it so, brethren? 



THE VICTIMIZED FARMER. 

The existing way of carrying on the 
world's business, which is absolutely 
unnecessary and outworn, grafts about 
equally on the workingman and the 
farmer, but it grafts on the farmer in 
a large variety of ways. 

It catches him coming and going. It 
skins him out of the returns for his 
products and it skins him on everything 
he buys. 

Of course, it does that to the work- 
ingman, too, but when you stop to think 
of it, there is something that seems 
particularly exasperating about the 
multiplicity of the ways it has of skin- 
ning the farmer and the cool audacity 
of its skinning operations. 

Take, for instance, the fact that when 
exploitation has piled up the cost of liv- 
ing for all of us the exploiters turn 
around and blame all upon the grasping 
farmer. 

"It is the farmer that makes beef 
high," says the Beef Trust magnate, 
signing a new batch of watered stock 
certificates. 

"It is all due to the farmer," says 
the cold storage man, hoisting the price 



THE VICTIMIZED FARMER. 189 

of eggs and putting away another mil- 
lion dozen for higher prices. 

"It's the sugar planter," says the 
Sugar Trust man as the market goes up 
two more notches. 

I don't know what farmers and plant- 
ers are getting all this wealth, but cer- 
tainly they are not among my acquaint- 
ances. All the farmers I know and are 
related to seem to be struggling just as 
hard as ever to make both ends meet. 
I saw one of my farming relatives not 
long ago. He told me something about 
the prices he was paying for machinery 
and lumber that made me sit up. I 
couldn't see where things were any bet- 
ter on his farm than when I was a boy. 

I had an uncle then that had 120 
acres of the best land in Scott County, 
Iowa. He was a good man and dis- 
played in their highest development all 
the virtues that I have heard praised all 
my life as the sure producers of suc- 
cess. He was sober, thrifty, persistent, 
painfully industrious and he knew his 
business. He used to make my bones 
ache by getting up in the middle of the 
night to go to work. 

Every year he would plant his crops 
scientifically and the fertile soil would 



190 THE PASSING SHOW OP CAPITALISM 

give an enormous yield. He would 
watch the harvest with satisfaction and 
feel sure that this year he would do 
well; but every year he found himself 
with just enough to pay the interest on 
his mortgage and buy what he abso- 
lutely needed at the store. There 
seemed to be a fatality about it. 

He had a turn for figures, and after 
some years he began to make calcula- 
tions first as to the difference between 
a reasonable return for his investment 
and labor and the money he actually 
got, and then as to what became of the 
difference. This led him in a study of 
railroad rates. From railroad rates he 
was led to the subject of railroad cap- 
italization and to consider whence came 
the money that paid the dividends 
thereon. He understood at last that in- 
crease of capitalization must in every 
instance mean increase of revenue and 
he wondered next what source of rev- 
enue there could possibly be except 
from producers like himself. He was 
working out this problem and had 
reached some estimate of the amount 
of his produce that was annually seized 
by the railroad company when that 
company (the Chicago, Rock Island & 



THE VICTIMIZED FARMER. 191 

Pacific) suddenly doubled its capital 
stock by the simple process of presenting 
each stockholder with more stock to the 
amount of his holdings. 

The old gentleman pondered this fact 
for a time and then drove into town 
and put his farm on the market. He 
had spent twenty-six years on it and all 
he had to show for his labor was the 
fact that he was alive. The railroads 
and the elevator gang had the rest. He 
saw he* was up against stacked cards 
and he quit the game. 

He was a staunch Republican because 
he had served in the war, and his po- 
litical faith was part of his religion. 
His next neighbor was of the same con- 
victions, but stronger practice. He was 
perfectly certain that the president and 
the grand old party would eventually 
set everything right and make the rail- 
roads, the elevators and the combina- 
tions get off the farmer's back. So he 
hung to his farm. 

In 1896 the national convention of his 
party was held in St. Louis. He had 
never seen that august event, and the 
river steamboats offering very cheap 
excursion rates he hiked down to St. 



192 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Louis to be impressed with awe and 
grandeur. 

At St. Louis he wandered about and 
finally got one day into the railroad sta- 
tion. On a side-track just outside was 
a line of very beautiful cars with bev- 
eled windows, nickel-plated railings and 
commodious observation platforms. He 
had never seen such an exhibit and in- 
quired minutely about it. 

"That," said a station employe, "is 
the private car of Chauncey Depew, 
president of the New York Central; 
that is the private car of the president 
of the Pennsylvania; the next is the 
private car of the president of the Big 
Four ; the next is the private car of the 
president of the Northern Pacific," and 
so on. 

"What are they all doing here?" 
asked the veteran. 

"Oh, they just brought these gentle- 
men and their friends to the conven- 
tion." 

A good-natured porter allowed the 
Iowan to go through one of the cars. 
He was amazed at the luxurious suites, 
the handsome bedrooms, the china and 
silverware, the wines in racks and the 
elaborate kitchens. 



THE VICTIMIZED FARMER. 193 

As he journeyed back home he pon- 
dered about these things. 

From Davenport he drove, in his old 
farm wagon without any springs. Very 
likely he thought of the difference. 
Anyway, when he got home he wrote a 
letter to General Weaver. The pride 
of his life had been the fact that he had 
never voted anything but the straight 
Republican ticket. But he wrote now 
that he had enough. He had discovered 
what became of the corn he raised and 
the hogs he fattened and who had 
copped off the product of his long hours 
of hard w T ork every day of his life. 
From this time on he should be a Popu- 
list or anything else that offered a 
chance to protest. 

"Free silver, free copper, free old 
iron or anything else/' he wrote. "Call 
it what you like, but Fve have enough 
of working to buy wines and build pri- 
vate cars for railroad presidents." 

"Back to the farm!" cry some of 
these exploiters, every time the increas- 
ing cost of living produces a fresh out- 
cry from the sore beset city dwellers. 

Fine. What are you going to do on 
the farm when you get there? Not half 
of the men already on the farms can 



194 THJE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

keep out of the grip of the mortgage 
shark. The more farmers, the more 
mortgages. What good that could do I 
haven't the slightest idea. I was up in 
the Central Northwest not long ago and 
a native assured me that 80 per cent of 
the farms there were mortgaged. I 
should think that was enough of that 
crop. 

He also told me about farmers that 
tilled 160 acres and after they had sold 
their wheat had sometimes as much as 
$60 for themselves. I fail to hear any 
loud call to the farm in that fact. 

I have yet to hear of mortgages on 
the homesteads of the gentlemen that 
manipulate the watered stock graft or 
the elevator graft. In my wanderings 
among their tasteful dwellings I have 
never discovered evidences that any of 
them were trying to live on $60 a year. 

Yet is it not an astonishing fact, 
when you come to reflect upon it, that 
the producer, who alone is of the slight- 
est value to society, universally gets the 
worst of it, and the parasite and cap- 
italist, who is not of the slightest use, 
always rides on the producer's back ? 

All the capital in the world could be 
abolished tomorrow and society would 



THE VICTIMIZED FARMER. 195 

move on as before. Every want of man 
would continue to be supplied, all pro- 
ductive industry proceed unchecked. 

Not one thing could be done without 
labor. 

Yet under the existing system the 
useless capitalist and parasite class 
takes four-fifths of the result of pro- 
ductive industry and the producer takes 
one-fifth. 

All because of the tolerance and good 
nature of the producer. He could in a 
day kick over the whole lop-sided, 
idiotic and preposterous system, cease 
to be preyed upon, cease to create 
wealth for others to enjoy and substi- 
tute a system under which every pro- 
ducer shall receive the full value of his 
product, and his class, being the only 
important class, shall be dominant in- 
stead of being trodden upon. 

How would that do? 



BEAUTIFUL MINNEAPOLIS. 

Minneapolis, Minn., is a large and 
beautiful city of about 320,000 inhabit- 
ants. 

It has attractive stores, some hand- 
some streets, many imposing residences, 
and abounds in what is known as "civic 
spirit." 

Fifty years ago it could hardly be 
said to exist; forty years ago it was a 
village in a mudhole; twenty-five years 
ago it had 125,000 inhabitants and was 
a raw town of the frontier. Now it is 
the Northwestern metropolis. 

It is a place of which many of its in- 
habitants are inordinately proud. When 
they travel they talk much and loudly 
about it and take a high key of su- 
periority. No other city on the conti- 
nent, they proclaim, has equal merits. 
They can discourse for hours about its 
marvelous success and achievements 
and then begin all over again if they 
can get a fresh lot of hearers. They 
will show conclusively that Minneapolis 
represents the summit of city making. 
It has the best schools, the best parks, 
the best streets, the best factories, the 
best citizens, the best everything. They 



BEAUTIFUL MINNEAPOLIS. 197 

invite you to name another city fit for 
comparison, but accept not of the bid- 
ding. They will but howl you off your 
feet with derision, 

It is a place of many millionaires and 
among them many that made their for- 
tunes in very dirty ways. Some stole 
timber lands, some stole ore lands and 
some made a business of defrauding the 
state. Everybody knows the manner 
in which these fortunes were accumu- 
lated and that if justice had been done 
many of the millionaires of Minneapolis 
would be in the penitentiary. But they 
are not in the penitentiary; they are 
among the most highly honored citi- 
zens. Nobody ever thinks the less of 
them because they stole their money; 
on the contrary, good men vie with one 
another in paying honor to these mil- 
lionaires. 

If a stranger comes to town and 
learns of these facts and expresses 
wonder thereat the townspeople look 
upon him as a weird, uncouth beast. 
Very likely, then, he will point out that 
the entire community is the loser by the 
peculations that made the millionaires 
rich. That will be cheerfully admitted, 
but what of it? To be sure, these men 



198 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

stole their money, but they got it, didn't 
they? And they have it now, haven't 
they? Then what of it? What's the 
use of being prudish about these things ? 

But if a burglar is caught entering 
a house or a clerk makes away with 
some of his employer's funds, Minneap- 
olis is a place of the sternest public 
virtue toward such. 

We must have honesty, if we have to 
enlarge the penitentiary. 

It is a place where beautiful palaces 
line a few famous streets and vast ag- 
gregations of miserable dwellings hud- 
dle together unnoticed. Of the miser- 
able dwellings the eloquent Minneapoli- 
tan on his travels apparently has no 
knowledge. "There is no poverty in 
Minneapolis !" he constantly asserts. 
"All are well-to-do here." A local of- 
ficer being asked by the national De- 
partment of Commerce and Labor con- 
cerning the number of unemployed in 
his city, replied that there was none. A 
thousand walked the streets within gun- 
shot of his office. 

It is a place where three-quarters of 
the population toil to make other per- 
sons rich, but they themselves get noth- 
ing for their toil except bare existence. 



BEAUTIFUL MINNEAPOLIS. 199 

The eloquent Minneapolis orators, being 
confronted with this fact, brush it 
lightly aside and dwell upon the su- 
perior mental attributes of those that 
have enriched themselves in their city. 
They would not dwell with admiration 
upon the superior mental attributes of 
pickpockets or second-story men, and 
yet to the impartial observer the only 
difference seems to be that the second- 
story man robs an individual and the 
timber thief robs the community. 

It is a place where three-quarters of 
the population dwell in poverty and y 
have no possible chance to dwell other- 
wise; where three in every four chil- 
dren are condemned at birth to lives of 
drudgery, misery and want; where not 
one child in five can receive anything 
like a fair education; where life for 
three children in every four can mean 
nothing but darkness, insufficiency and 
slavish toil for the benefit of the minor- 
ity. 

In this city so much boasted of and 
so highly praised exist some of the 
worst and most abject poverty and 
some of the vilest conditions to be found 
anywhere in the West. On one side the 
impartial observer sees the increasing 



200 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

slum and on the other the senseless and 
idiotic extravagances of the rich, and 
year by year both conditions become 
more striking and more sinister. 

It is a place where all these things 
are known and nobody cares. It is a 
place where in spite of the widespread 
"civic spirit," whatever that may be, 
you can get no response among the com- 
fortable to any facts about the growth 
of poverty or the menace of basic con- 
ditions ; where leading men frankly ad- 
mit that they do not believe in democ- 
racy; where at any time you can cause 
a riot of protest among the bourgeoisie 
and the parasites by merely suggesting 
that a workingman might hold an of- 
fice ; where the ideal of public virtue is 
expressed in a fulsome reception to a 
railroad magnate that made his money 
by the most questionable means ; where 
nothing is admired but money; where 
the one standard and measure of re- 
spectability is dollars; where in the 
pursuit of more dollars men gouge and 
tear and snarl like wolves at one an- 
other; where the only achievement to 
which the young are encouraged is the 
getting of dollars ; where the only topic 
men willingly talk of is dollars ; where 



BEAUTIFUL, MINNEAPOLIS. 201 

everything is smeared with the filth of 
dollar grubbing; where young women 
are trained to squander in display and 
the race for social distinction the dol- 
lars gouged by their fathers or hus- 
bands; where the fat-head business 
man subscribes painfully for an art gal- 
lery because that is said to be the 
proper thing, but will not give one 
moment's heed to the rising tide of 
poverty; where the art gallery, the 
boulevards and the parks are openly 
arranged for the especial delectation of 
the rich and the fortunate; where the 
universal fashion among the classes is 
to sneer at the poor as ignorant and re- 
sponsible for their own condition. 

It is a place where thousands of wom- 
en work in factories and the base- 
ments of stores under the most insani- 
tary conditions ; where almost no effort 
is made to civilize these places; where 
the department stores keep open on 
Saturday nights until 9 o'clock; where 
the department store girls frequently 
faint from weariness at their tasks; 
where when they so faint water is 
dashed into their faces until they re- 
vive, and are driven back to their work 



202 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

again; where the wages paid to these 
girls are a crime against humanity. 

It is a place where there are thirty 
or forty women's clubs that meet reg- 
ularly, like convocations of sleek and 
well-fed cats, to exchange scandals and 
play bridge ; where to every one of these 
clubs the facts about women's employ- 
ment in Minneapolis are perfectly well 
known ; where the members of all these 
clubs know well enough that these 
women employes are being murdered in 
body and soul, and where if one were 
to suggest to these clubs that the mem- 
bers owed any duty to their working 
sisters such a one would be looked upon 
as no better than insane. 

It is a place where the greedy em- 
ployer has unlimited power to oppress, 
maltreat, swindle, rob and slay his 
working women and the well-to-do know 
it and do not care a hang. 

It is a place that has the rottenest 
railroad station in the United States, a 
vile, dark, filthy, stinking place, in- 
fested with rats, perilously insanitary, 
twenty years outgrown by the traffic. 
It is a place where not long ago a com- 
mittee of prominent citizens was 
formed to see if it were not possible to 



BEAUTIFUL MINNEAPOLIS. 203 

remove this hideous blight upon the 
city; where the committeemen went on 
their bellies to the railroad magnate 
that rules the city and the state and 
humbly begged to know if Minneapolis 
might please have a new station ; where 
the magnate kicked the committee in 
the face and refused the petition ; where 
not one member of the committee nor 
of the complacent, well-trained business 
community was moved to inquire what 
right this man had to decide such mat- 
ters, nor who created him a feudal 
baron with dutiful subjects at his 
mercy. 

It is a place where the corporations 
rule ; where the street railroad company 
gouges and extorts ; where corporations 
have obtained long-term and preposter- 
ous franchises to rob and plunder; 
where the express companies make an 
additional charge for delivering pack- 
ages; where the telegraph companies 
make an additional charge for deliver- 
ing telegrams; where no one protests 
against these petty forms of larceny, 
but where the dollar grubbers regard 
them as smart and clever, being ways 
to get the dollar. 

It is a place where people go smugly 



204 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

to church and rejoice that there are no 
poorly dressed persons in their congre- 
gations; where snobbery reigns trium- 
phant, graft runs riot, all the truly good 
are on the make, nobody among them 
cares for anything else, the water sup- 
ply is polluted, the poor get typhoid, 
the rich buy spring water and are im- 
mune, everybody is satisfied with this 
and every other putrid condition and 
the fat Pharisees walk to and fro in 
the market place, thanking God that 
all the persons in their set are re- 
spectable. 

Yes, it is a great place, a typical 
Twentieth Century American city, and 
no wonder the blatant gentlemen that 
offend your ears by shouting its praises 
are so extremely proud of it. 

Who could fail to be proud of such a 

city ! 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

P. S.— 

They have had lately at work in 
Minneapolis a Vice Commission. I 
talked with one of its members. He 
told me the Commission had found that 
there were no more gilded palaces of ill- 
fame in the city. Policemen, hackmen, 



BEAUTIFUL MINNEAPOLIS. 205 

detectives, all testified that such places 
were going out of fashion. 

I asked why. 

"Why," he said, "since the cost of 
living has risen so much it has become 
more than ever difficult for many em- 
ployed women to support themselves 
on their wages. Difficult!" he broke 
out suddenly, with a violent gesture 
and a bitter word, "it's impossible! 
Well, you know what that means." 

But you could tell that fact to the 
whole middle class outfit in Minneap- 
olis and they wouldn't care. It is not 
our daughters that go thus to the devil. 
On with the dollar-grubbing ! 

But suppose the class whose daugh- 
ters do thus go to the devil should 
weary of the game and demand that 
their daughters should have equal op- 
portunity with other daughters to live 
and to maintain -their womanhood ? 

That would work some changes in 
this Graftopolis, this soft and easy 
Paradise of the Pharisees, wouldn't it? 

What? 



THE MOUNTAIN BUILDERS. 

I understand that Mr. James B. Duke, 
the most active spirit in the American 
Tobacco Trust, is so much disgusted 
with the recent decision of the Supreme 
Court in the case of his company that 
he intends to give up the business and 
devote himself to other interests, a 
change that would pave the way to the 
complete absorption of the Tobacco 
Trust by the Standard Oil group, 

Whatever Mr. Duke may elect to do 
he will always have a picturesque place 
in the history of American plutocracy. 

He is the man that, having vast mil- 
lions collected by the operations of the 
Trust, could think of no way of spend- 
ing his income except by creating ar- 
tificial mountains. He could buy any 
number of natural mountains ready 
made, but none of these would do for 
Mr. Duke. He must create some. So 
he bought several thousand acres of 
perfectly flat land near Somerville, N. 
J., and for years now an army of work- 
men has been engaged in piling up a 
range of mountains to his taste. Thou- 
sands of trainloads of earth have been 
carried thither; three mountains 600 



THE MOUNTAIN BUILDERS. 207 

feet high have already been con- 
structed; there are lakes, plateaus and 
mountain streams where formerly was 
only a dead flat plain. An immense 
water works system pumps up the 
water for the mountain brooks which 
flow in a life-like manner over artificial 
rocks and concrete chasms. It is a 
grand place and has cost Mr. Duke so 
far about $30,000,000. Some persons 
say that our rich men (after our will- 
ing contributions have made them rich) 
do not know how to make wise use of 
their money. I point to the example of 
Mr. Duke as the refutation of all such 
slanders. You bet he knows. What 
could be wiser than to make artificial 
mountains ? 

The facts about Mr. Duke's enter- 
prise are not generally known. I have 
set them down here because I am con- 
vinced that all consumers of the To- 
bacco Trust's pleasing goods will be in- 
terested in knowing what becomes of 
their money. This is what becomes of 
a part of it. Artificial mountains. 

I do not know what Mr. Duke intends 
to call his mountains when they are 
done. The Alfalfa Range would be a 
pretty name. 



THE FINEST SPECIMEN IN CAPTIVITY. 

This life of ours abounds in bitter 
disappointments, but none, I think, 
equal those that beset and afflict the 
conscientious collectors of intellectual 
curios. 

Take my own experience as an ex- 
ample. When I got the Hon. Augustus 
0. Stanley of Kentucky I was perfectly 
sure I had secured the finest specimen 
extant of the prehistoric dodo bird or 
flying bonehead. Day after day I looked 
at him, ornamenting the shelves of my 
collection, and gloated over his acquisi- 
tion. Where else in all the world, I 
said, contemplating his matchless 
beauties, where else would you find a 
Congressman that can sit all day on his 
perch and utter the word "Competi- 
tion"? And echo gleefully answered, 
"Where?" 

But now in Massachusetts they have 
unearthed another specimen compared 
with which the Stanley bird looks poor 
indeed. The new treasure is called the 
Hon. Samuel W. McCall and is also a 
Congressman. The Stanley bird, it is 
believed, dates from about 100 A. D., 
but the McCall bird has come down to 



FINEST SPECIMEN IN CAPTIVITY. 209 

us from an antiquity so great that none 
of the archeologists has so far ventured 
to compute it. 

The Stanley bird can say "Competi- 
tion," but the McCall bird utters a 
whole sentence. Properly prodded un- 
der the feathers he cocks his bonehead 
on one side in the prettiest fashion and 
says: "Government by the people 
must always be a failure; what we 
want is government by the Wise and 
Good, of which I am what." 

Wonderful specimen! Happy Massa- 
chusetts ! Happy collector that can put 
on his shelves a thing so rare ! I am 
told experts report that you could get a 
new idea into the Stanley bird with an 
awl, but the head of the McCall bird 
has turned a diamond drill. 



BEATING US BY DETACHMENTS. 

Twenty-eight thousand workingmen 
from the shops of the Union Pacific, 
Southern Pacific and Illinois Central 
railroads are striking for a just and 
reasonable cause. 

They are fighting the battle of work- 
ingmen against unjust conditions; the 
battle of all workingmen everywhere. 

At great cost and sacrifice they are 
upholding the principle of working- 
men's solidarity without which the toil- 
ers of the world are slaves that have no 
hope. 

The shops at North Platte, Julesburg, 
Cheyenne, Ogden, Oakland are idle ; the 
workingmen that used to be employed 
there now stand about the stations 
watching the trains go by. 

These trains are operated by their 
brother workingmen, engineers, fire- 
men, conductors and brakemen, whose 
battle the striking shopmen are fight- 
ing. 

If these engineers, firemen, conduct- 
ors and brakemen should take their 
places by the side of the shopmen the 
fight would be that instant won. 

Because they do not so take their 



BEATING US BY DETACHMENTS. 211 

places the fight goes on and inevitably 
every day diminishes the chances of its 
success because the resources of that 
little army are limited, but the re- 
sources of the enemy it attacks are 
boundless and tremendous. 

Knowing all this, the strikers stand 
about the station and watch their 
brothers bearing arms against them 
and bringing up the strike-breakers to 
take their places. 

Strange, impressive and instructive 
spectacle ! 

The engineers would tell you that the 
fight is none of theirs. Besides, they 
have their separate agreement with 
their employers and could not join the 
strike anyway. 

The firemen would tell you that the 
strike is none of theirs and refer to 
the agreement between their brother- 
hood and the company. 

The trainmen would tell you that the 
fight is none of theirs. 

Yet every one of these would be un- 
der a grievous error, for the fight is for 
all of them. 

If the railroads succeed in defeating 
the shopmen they will deliver a terrific 



212 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

blow at all organized labor on their 
lines. 

When they have beaten the shopmen 
they will naturally want to beat the 
trainmen. When they have beaten the 
trainmen they will want to beat the 
engineers and firemen. 

Every victory they win in this strug- 
gle makes the next the easier. 

Is it then no concern of the engi- 
neers, firemen and trainmen? It is 
every concern of theirs, for assuredly 
if the companies get away with this 
struggle the rest of their program will 
follow fast. 

If any engineer, fireman, conductor 
or brakeman doubts this let me ask him 
one question. 

How do you suppose it happened that 
four months before this strike began 
these companies were prepared for it, 
even to the extent of building stockades 
at their shops to protect scabs and 
strike-breakers ? How did that happen ? 

How does it happen that the inner 
circles of big railroad men know very 
well and do not conceal that the strike 
was desired and precipitated by the 
companies for the express purpose of 
breaking the unions? 



BEATING US BY DETACHMENTS. 213 

You may not have heard this before. 
Let me assure you that it is, neverthe- 
less, the absolute fact and every rail- 
road reporter in the United States is 
aware of it. 

Do you imagine then for a moment 
that if the companies succeed in their 
attempt to destroy the shopmen's 
unions that they will stop there? 

Not unless the most adroit of indus- 
trial commanders have lost their cun- 
ning. 

Here is a great, solid, powerful army, 
well intrenched, provided with unlim- 
ited ammunition, and that of the best, 
equipped with the latest weapons. 

An army is arrayed against it. And 
this second army sends to the attack 
one company at a time. 

If it should make the attack at once 
and all together it could sweep away 
the intrenched army like chaff. 

It does not attack at once and all to- 
gether. It sends forward one company 
at a time. 

As fast as each company appears the 
machine guns mow it down and you can 
hear the exultant laughter of the in- 
trenched commanders. 



214 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

That is the way we are carrying on 
this war now, brethren. 

How long shall we keep on with these 
tactics that insure defeat? 

It is as easy to win as it is to be 
beaten whenever we are ready to win. 



A HERO OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. 

A very good example of the methods 
by which the power of tainted news is 
exercised came in the dispatches that 
were sent out on the death of Stolypin. 

Every effort was made in these dis- 
patches to cast over the last hours of 
that cruel and red-handed murderer the 
halo of romance and martyrdom. "It 
was with a fine display of rugged cour- 
age that he approached his death," said 
the Associated Press. "His final 
thoughts were for his people." 

Imagine now the average man, totally 
uninformed about Stolypin and his 
crimes. What impression would he re- 
ceive from such a picture? In all the 
dispatches was never once a suggestion 
of the reasons that prompted the assas- 
sination, never a hint of the man's mon- 
strous cruelties, of his savage reaction- 
ary policies, of the iron determination 
with which he had trampled down every 
suggestion of progress, of his relentless 
persecutions and organized terrorisms 
nor of the hundreds of men and women 
he has doomed to the hell of Siberia — 
for the crime of advocating liberty. 

But according to the Associated 



216 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Press, here lay the brave hero, patriot 
and martyr, going courageously to his 
death while "his last thoughts were of 
his people." 

What people? Those he had con- 
demned to be hanged ? Or those he had 
sent to the slow murdering processes of 
the convict's camps? 

Thirty million persons in the United 
States and Canada read these dispatches 
thus artfully colored. What must be the 
inevitable effect upon their minds? 

Then think that about every event 
that happens, great and small; about 
the work of Congress and the acts of 
government ; about strikes and lockouts, 
arrests and trials ; about the things that 
are fundamental conditions of life; 
about the deeds of corporations and the 
tricks of financiers; about laws and 
courts, candidates and elections, men 
and affairs ; the same influence is stead- 
ily at work, feeding these readers with 
facts distorted, with substitutions, pre- 
varications and inventions; and is it 
wonderful that progress is so slow? 

You cannot expect much progress in 
a country where the people are not al- 
lowed to know what is going on. 

We have among us many respectable 



A HERO OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. 217 

gentlemen that are convinced conditions 
are wrong and ought to be set right, I 
have one question for all of them: 

What on* earth do you think you can 
accomplish unless you get a press that 
is uncontrolled? 



THE MCNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 

I have been looking all these two 
weeks for some signs that the events at 
Los Angeles have moved the people of 
the nation to solemn and wholesome re- 
flection about conditions in this country 
of theirs, but I find none. 

There has been a wild outcry for 
blood; the man-hunt has been cheered 
with enthusiasm; a thousand dull 
chumps have ponderously informed 
labor that it must purge itself of vio- 
lence; the Old Docs have shaken their 
heads and uttered endless platitudes; 
bromidic horror of the dreadful union 
has descended upon us in a flood; the 
Parrys and the Posts have shrieked and 
babbled ; suspected or intimidated labor 
leaders have made mad haste to excul- 
pate themselves; various persons have 
declared that although they are opposed 
to capital punishment they think the 
McNamaras ought to be hanged ; Chris- 
tian clergymen have preached the doc- 
trine of vengeance ; the Federal govern- 
ment has taken up the chase; an army 
of spies is dogging suspected persons;, 
and the country applauds the idea that 
we must have more blood for the blood 
already shed. 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 219 

Meantime, nobody seems to think for 
a moment about the causes that may lie 
behind the acts of these two men — and 
possibly others. 

They confess that they were engaged 
in a conspiracy to destroy much prop- 
erty with dynamite, and one of them 
says that he exploded dynamite under 
the Los Angeles Times building, causing 
the loss of twenty-one lives. They do 
not say so, but elsewhere the positive 
declaration is made that in all these 
violent operations they have had the 
sympathy if not the assistance and con- 
nivance of other men, perhaps of many 
other men. 

The most obvious, simple, primary, 
rudimentary reflection, therefore, would 
be as to why these men should engage 
in a plot of a kind so strange, deadly 
and desperate. 

Men do not do these things without 
some very powerful impulse that sweeps 
them away from reason and makes 
them willing to accept the imminent 
peril of the most abhorred and loath- 
some form of death. In this instance 
there was evidently no impulse of gain 
nor of personal advantage of any kind 



220 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

whatsoever. These men risked hanging 
and could get nothing from undergoing 
that risk. 

What then was the impulse? 

Why, they thought they were fight- 
ing the battle of their class. That was 
all. They were undoubtedly wrong, but 
they had a belief that they could terrify 
into decency the powers and the men 
that it seemed to them were responsible 
for the war that was being made upon 
the working class of America. That is 
perfectly evident from the public state- 
ments they made, and it is no less evi- 
dent from the nature of their deeds 01 
violence and the conditions under which 
those deeds were committed. 

A conspiracy existed to terrorize cer- 
tain persons that were believed to have 
treated labor with indignity. That is 
the established fact, is it not? Then 
how preposterous is the notion, appar- 
ently all but universal in this country, 
that these men were bloody-minded vil- 
lains, who murdered from the sheer love 
of murder and destroyed for the sheer 
love of destruction ! How shallow to go 
about bellowing for their death as if 
there was nothing to be considered ex- 
cept how to annihilate them ! How im- 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 221 

becile to think that any of the deep lying 
causes of this most significant chapter 
of history will be in the least affected if 
you put these men to death or a hundred 
like them! Above all, how wicked to 
think that in such a grave and terrible 
revelation we have no duty and no re- 
sponsibility except to stamp the spark 
of life from these men and exult over 
our vengeance upon them ! 

Is it true that as a nation we have 
no more power of reflection than the 
national performance in this case would 
indicate? Then I should say that we 
have other things to reform besides the 
labor unions and one of them is the pub- 
lic school system of this country, that 
after so many years of effort can pro- 
duce an average mind so little capable 
of thinking and an average conscience 
so little sensible of duty. And I beg 
leave to believe that this fact, if it be 
a fact, is of infinitely greater conse- 
quence to the nation than the explosion 
in the Los Angeles Times office or any 
views of Harrison Grey Otis. 

The McNamaras and those associated 
with them believed that the working 
class of America was the victim of great 
and intolerable injustice. 



222 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM. 

Whence came this sense of injustice? 

In the first place, like all men that 
under the present system of society toil 
to create wealth for others, they were 
vaguely sensible of a great enduring 
fundamental wrong. Without having 
reasoned to the end, they and all other 
workingmen felt that in some way 
something was radically wrong in their 
environment and conditions. They saw 
that from the products of industry capi- 
tal took much and labor received very 
little, and without reasoning about this, 
either, they felt that it embodied a huge 
injustice. They felt rather than per- 
ceived that labor created all wealth and 
won from it merely a bare existence; 
capital created nothing whatever and 
won from the work of other men lux- 
ury, superfluity and colossal power. And 
without philosophical perception as to 
the bases of this wrong they felt the 
sting of it. 

They saw their own children growing 
up, inadequately educated, without op- 
portunity in life, doomed from the be- 
ginning to drudgery and insufficiency, 
and the children of the capitalists 
launched upon life with every conceiv- 
able advantage, and without under- 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 223 

standing exactly why this monstrous in- 
equality came to be, the bare fact 
goaded them daily to resentment. 

They had also still more pungent 
causes to stir them to passion. Besides 
this vague sense of wrong all about 
them, they saw that all society is or- 
ganized to deny ordinary justice to the 
man that toils. 

They saw that in the courts, pledged 
to deal justly between man and man, 
the toiler was always upon a different 
footing from the capitalist. 

They saw that whenever the toilers 
attempted to better their condition or 
protest against the injustice from 
which they suffered, all the machinery 
of government was turned against them. 
The police and the militia were em- 
ployed to cow their spirits and drive 
them back to their work; their revolt 
called forth bitter execration from all 
the leaders of public opinion ; the press, 
controlled by the employers, deliber- 
ately misrepresented their cause and 
covered them with contempt and ridi- 
cule. 

They saw, too, that the organized sys- 
tem of justice was almost universally 



224 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

a bulwark of strength to the employers, 
but no defense to the employes. 

They saw that in each great strike 
the courts, as if by pre-concert, took 
stronger grounds against labor that had 
organized for its own defense. They 
saw that each adverse ruling by one 
judge became the precedent and ground 
for a still more oppressive ruling by 
the next judge, and that against these 
rulings labor had absolutely no recourse. 
It was bound hand and foot and de- 
livered helpless to its enemies. 

They saw that whenever a strike oc- 
curred the employers went to the courts 
and secured injunctions that practically 
defeated the purpose of the strike, but 
there were no injunctions to protect 
toilers from the conditions that made 
strikes inevitable. 

They saw that to aid the employers, 
judges were willing to draw imaginary 
lines in the public highway and to for- 
bid strikers to cross such lines, but 
working men could secure no such as- 
sistance in their struggle against the 
employers' injustice. 

They saw that judges would enjoin 
workingmen from talking about their 
grievances, but if a workingman were 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 225 

to ask that employers be enjoined from 
planning new ways to oppress labor 
such workingmen would be driven from 
the courts with shouts of laughter. 

They saw one judge forbidding a 
labor union to maintain a meeting place 
on the ground that if workingmen met 
they would discuss a strike. But they 
knew that if they were to apply for an 
injunction against a rich man's club on 
the ground that plots against labor were 
laid there, although the charge would 
be perfectly true, the entire press would 
shriek with laughter and make of the 
movers of such a suggestion targets for 
endless abuse and vilification while the 
courts would refuse to entertain their 
petition. 

They saw that the judges were deter- 
mined to make striking a crime; that 
the settled policy of the courts was to 
establish a condition in which men must 
keep at their work so long as their em- 
ployers might desire; that one judge en- 
joined a union from continuing a strike, 
and a little later another judge found 
that the motives for a strike constituted 
a crime, and a few days later another 
judge decided that even to aid a strike 
was illegal. 



226 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

They saw that while this judicial 
campaign was going on against labor 
in the lower and the state courts they 
had just as little chance for justice in 
that Supreme Court that had been 
lauded to them as the embodiment of 
wisdom and was the court of last re- 
sort in their country. 

They saw the Supreme Court of the 
United States decide that the boycott is 
illegal but the blacklist is legal, al- 
though the boycott and the blacklist are 
the same thing, called by one name when 
used by the workingmen and by an- 
other when used by the employers. 

They saw the same court hold that 
in the case of a strike all resulting dam- 
ages to business might be assessed 
against a labor union and collected by 
judgment against individual members 
of that union, but they knew very well 
that the court would not entertain the 
idea that in the case of a lockout the 
losses suffered by workingmen might be 
assessed against the employer. 

They saw the nation pass a law 
against great combinations of capital. 
They saw that law a dead letter on the 
statute books so far as combinations of 
capital were concerned, but they saw it 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 227 

twisted from its original purpose into 
an instrument to oppress labor. While 
with impunity great combinations of 
capital were being formed and were ac- 
quiring a menacing power, this law, in- 
ert against them, was invoked to throw 
labor leaders into jail and to deprive 
them of the constitutional rights of free 
assembly and free speech. 

They saw men sentenced to imprison- 
ment for saying that they would not 
purchase a certain brand of stoves. 
They knew it w r ould be utterly futile to 
invoke the law against any employer 
that said he w r ould not use a certain 
brand of labor, and yet the two cases 
in any just view would be equal and 
parallel. 

They knew, too, that to appeal to the 
Congress of the United States for any 
relief from these oppressions would be 
utterly useless. A few years before the 
employing class in Great Britain had 
wrung from the courts there a decision 
similar to that in which the United 
States Supreme Court held labor unions 
liable for damages from a strike. In 
Great Britain organized labor had asked 
Parliament to correct so grave and 
manifest an injustice and Parliament 



228 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

had within two or three months ac- 
ceded to the request. But in the United 
States the Congress had refused again 
and again not merely to correct the 
wrong but to consider it. For three 
years the representatives of American 
organized labor stood hat in hand at the 
door of the House Committee on Labor 
and were denied even one moment in 
which to make their statement. 

Meantime the law continued to be en- 
forced against the labor unions that it 
was never intended to reach and con- 
tinued to be inffective against the com- 
binations of capital against which alone 
it was designed. 

They knew all these things. They 
knew also that all the time they were 
the objects not merely of the dislike and 
opposition of the employing class but 
of its active hatred, contempt and ridi- 
cule. They knew that the mere fact 
that they worked with their hands 
made them contemptible in the eyes of 
the rich and the fortunate. They knew 
that they carried a brand of inferiority 
merely because they worked. They knew 
that in all respects they were held to be 
different from other men and inferior 
to them. They knew that "a common 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 220 

working man" was the universal term 
of reproach among those for whom they 
toiled. They knew that they had be- 
come a class apart; that their children 
were under the stigma of society; that 
their wives were not esteemed as were 
the wives of the possessing class; that 
they were at once the pariahs and the 
jest of the wealthy and the comfortable. 

Out of these conditions what would 
you expect to come? 

If there be anything that life so far 
on this planet has demonstrated it is 
that men will resent injustice. 

Not wisely, always; not effectively, 
always; not in the best way, always. 
But always they will resent it. 

And now we come down to the final 
springs of this momentous tragedy at 
Los Angeles. Because this spirit in 
men that makes them resent injustice 
is the same identical spirit that has 
given us all the liberty that we possess. 
If it were not for the very same spirit 
that at bottom moved the McNamara 
brothers to their terrible deeds we 
should be today the dish-rags of any 
power that might be pleased to oppress 
us. Hate the McNamaras , deed as 
much as you will, from this fact there 



230 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

is absolutely no escape. As soon as you 
begin to ask concerning the reasons for 
the McNamaras' crimes that is what you 
find and the only thing you find. It is 
all very well to splutter about these 
men as murderers and horrible mis- 
creants; but I defy any human' being 
to go one inch below the surface of this 
case and find anything else. We have 
been favored with a vast amount of 
flub-dub and hypocritical nonsense about 
it. For once let's see if we can be per- 
fectly frank and square about it. No 
more pretense. 

Then I say again, that the moment 
you get under the surface of the case 
this is what you find, that the impelling 
motive of these men was a resentment 
against a huge social injustice, and that 
however misdirected the resentment 
might have been, the origin of it was 
the origin of the very thing that has 
given to the race all the political pro- 
gress it has ever known. 

Men will revolt against injustice, law 
or no law. You can • pile any nation 
knee-deep with statutes and if in that 
nation is a body of men that believes 
it is suffering from a great and intoler- 
able wrong it will resent that wrong. 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 231 

And if you close against that class the 
natural avenues of restitution and de- 
fense, it will blow your statutes at the 
moon, good praters about law and or- 
der, and I don't care where you may go 
about this world you will find this to 
be the fact. You may cry out against 
it until you are blue in the face; you 
will not change the basic truth. Law or 
no law. 

But now you say, that admitting all 
this, the means of protest chosen by the 
McNamaras was very wrong and de- 
testable and all that. To blow up build- 
ings and to kill men are very bad means 
of resenting the wrongs of a class. 

Without a doubt. 

But here again, leave fustian and 
platitude and look beneath the surface 
of things. 

You take a man that because of the 
inevitable conditions of the present sys- 
tem of society has little education and 
an untrained mind. Take one that 
doesn't know well the lessons of history 
because he was not allowed to find them 
out. Take one that has never had a 
chance to discover that violence always 
defeats its own ends; that force is not 
the means to use against evil ; that mind 



232 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

and mind alone is the determining fac- 
tor in human action. Take a man that 
because of his environment has never 
had a chance to know that the surest 
way to weaken the cause of labor is to 
use violence in its behalf; a man that 
has never reflected that the employing 
class possesses all the weapons, all the 
army, all the navy, all the guns, all the 
expressions of public opinion, and that 
it can never be unseated by force, only 
by majorities. 

Take one that because of defective 
schooling has never acquired the 
thoughtful habit, and because of the en- 
vironment that we provide has been 
accustomed to regard violence as the 
natural protest against every insult. 
Take one also that has in his blood an 
ancestral sense of wrong unavenged and 
a national hatred unappeased. 

Now let such a man believe that the 
class to which he belongs is denied all 
the fundamental rights ; that it is daily 
despoiled and robbed ; that the most or- 
dinary principles of justice are per- 
verted in behalf of its wronger; that 
against all this no protest is of the 
slightest avail or will even be heard; 
that his class is utterly helpless artf 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 233 

hopeless, the blind and bound Samson 
of enemies that gloat over his impo- 
tence; and what would you naturally 
expect to happen? 

So I say to you that the real culprits 
in this dreadful story are not the two 
men that in our wisdom we have en- 
tombed at San Quentin. The real cul- 
prits are the system of society that pro- 
duces these conditions and the men and 
Women that acquiesce in them. As a 
secondary cause the courts have done 
more to blow up the Times building than 
the McNamaras ever did, but I look be- 
yond even them. The blackest culprits 
are the men and women that know well 
enough of the essentially unjust con- 
ditions of modern life; that know the 
vast majority of mankind is condemned 
to insufficiency and intellectual dark- 
ness, and still go their way content with 
the thought that they at least have 
enough. 

And if the man-hunters that with so 
much decency have been going up and 
down yelling for blood want something 
worth while to pursue, let them pur- 
sue themselves, for they are the real 
murderers in this case. I am sorry for 
the twenty-one men that perished in the 



234 THE PASSING SHOW OF CAPITALISM 

Times building. They were the inno- 
cent victims of a perverted idea and a 
stupid blunder. But what really slew 
them was not the explosion in the Times 
office. It was the callous conscience of 
a nation that sees about it the most 
monstrous conditions of injustice and 
will make no protest. 

It is well to be sorry for the twenty- 
one that perished in the Times building, 
but we ought to see to it with fervent 
care that our sympathies are not limited 
to them alone. We ought to be sorry 
no less for the thousands of men that 
are sacrificed every year to the greed 
of capitalism; the men that are killed 
unnecessarily in mines and factories 
and on the railroads; the men that are 
killed because employers are too greedy 
to provide proper safeguards; women 
that are poisoned in factories, sweat- 
shops and ill-ventilated department 
stores; children that are killed in fac- 
tory work or broken down before their 
time with the diseases of the slums. 
Let us be sorry for them all, and not 
forget that it is for the sake of the 
same capitalism that all this blood is 
shed, and that so long as we tolerate 
capitalism not one of us is guiltless for 



McNAMARAS AND BACK OF THEM. 235 

these horrible slaughters any more than 
we are for the twenty-one lives that 
perished in the building of the Los 
Angeles Times. 

"Blood !" yell the people that believe 
in vengeance. "These twenty-one lives 
must be avenged !" 

With exactly as much reason and 
good sense one might stand over the 
statistics of industrial murders demand- 
ing blood. A human life is a human 
life; to sacrifice one for the sake of 
profits must be as bad as to sacrifice 
one for the sake of a mistaken princi- 
ple. Let us have an end to all this dis- 
gusting reversion to the jungle- wolf. 
All alike are guilty. If equal and exact 
justice were done upon those responsi- 
ble for the Los Angeles Times explosion, 
only those would now be at liberty that 
have never consented to the system that 
produces these horrors. Instead of cry- 
ing for blood we ought humbly to admit 
our fault that we have suffered to grow 
up in this country a condition of hatred 
and injustice so appalling and repair 
our error by abolishing the system un- 
der which these things are absolutely 
certain. 



APR 4 1912 



